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The

Jew

and

Civilization

By
ADA STERLING

Author of

"A Belle of the Fifties," "Mary, Queen of Scott,"
Etc, Etc.

AETCO PUBLISHING CO.
16 East 41st Street

NEW YORK. CITY

1924

Copyright, 1924 by

AETCO PUBLISHING CO.

New York, N. Y.

All Rights Reserved

DEDICATED

to

the work of promoting a better
understanding amongst the
members of the human family

Table of Contents

PAGE

Chapter I. Introductory 9

Chapter II. The Jew as Citizen and Patriot 24

Chapter III. The Jew in Industry 47

Chapter IV. The Jew in Commerce 72

Chapter V. The Jew in Finance 89

Chapter VI. The Jew in Philanthropy 109

Chapter VII. The Jew in Literature 131

Chapter VIII. The Jew in Modern Literature. 151

Chapter IX. The Jew in Art 170

Chapter X. The Jew in Music 187

Chapter XI. The Jew in Mathematics and Physics 202

Chapter XII. The Jew in Medicine 223

Chapter XIII. The Jew in Agriculture 240

Chapter XIV. The Jew in Jurisprudence ; in States-
manship; in Diplomacy 258

Chapter XV. The Jew as Moral Force 282

Chapter XVI. Summary 304

CHAPTER I
Introductory

"I am glad to be able to say that while the Jews of
the United States have remained loyal to their faith,
and their race traditions, they have become indissolubly
incorporated in the great army of American citizenship
prepared to make oil sacrifice for the country, either in
peace or war, and striving for the perpetuation of good
government and for the maintenance of the principles
embodied in our Constitution. They are honorably
distinguished by their industry, their obedience to lazv,
and their devotion to the national welfare! 9

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
'(In letter dated "Washington, November 16th, 1905")

purpose of this book which it seems best to de-
JL clare in the beginning, is to re-state, on the pro side,
the "Jewish Problem" the con side having been so widely
stated by others to a people more or less disturbed, ac-
cording as they are conscientious or careless thinkers ; or,
according as they have become infected with the idea that
"humanity is an illusion," an idea which the over-intellec-
tualized have been disseminating for years and to which
the name Kultur, or Efficiency has been affixed. This new
theory of human relations, this kultwr is a curious fungus
which grows upon the surface of today's civilization, but
its roots do not reach down to the heart. Its manifestations
have all the allure of the spectacular. Its flaming flowers
wave in the wind of popular speech and in that still more
evanescent quantity, "public opinion" like little inciting
banners of anarchy* "Humanity is an empty word" writes
one of these; and living sympathy, or sympathy with the
living, is "a folly of the past." But it seems quite clear
and history repeatedly confirms this that extremes of this
sort sooner or later set humanity upon a renewed search,

9

10 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

as Dr. Petre has said, for a restoration of its rhythm and
a re-establishment of harmonic balance.

In this way the present author has re-acted from the
many-volumed attacks upon the Jews for which Mr. Henry
Ford is responsible; from the nightmare of exaggerated
spleen exhibited by Houston Stuart Chamberlain, and
which, more than once becomes incoherent and even comi-
cal in its paroxysms of frenzied antipathy; from the artifi-
cial, narrow, and even shallow arguments of Mr. Hilaire
Belloc, who does not hesitate to define his belief that the
Jews must be got rid of by hook or by crook, and to state
openly v as we shall presently see, that both of these imple-
ments will be used if the Jews themselves do not volun-
tarily withdraw from participation in today's normal
activities.

The records of the past show that sectarian bigotry
and racial animosities have come invariably as the after-
math of bitter wars. In the case of the recent world un-
rest in connection with anti-Semitism the fact should be
faced squarely that the late war merely lulled racial ill-
feeling to sleep, nothing more ; for it had been openly in-
dulged in and cruelly displayed all over Europe, for the
better part of the last half of last century. In the recent
conflict; in the great hour of humanity's need, the fires were
merely banked for the time being. Almost co-incidentally
with the firing of the last shot they burst again into visible
flame. The armies of Eastern European countries had
scarcely been mustered out after the armistice had been de-
clared, armies which in each instance had included brave
Jewish soldiers, and whose lot had been eased by Jewish
philanthropy, whose ill and wounded had been soothed by
Jewish nurses, before exciting newspaper articles and
pamphlets began to appear, -warning the world o a com-
ing racial conflict. One. such, entitled "A Knife for the
Jews" was circulated openly in an Eastern European coun-

INTRODUCTORY 11

try. Immediately thereafter the most unprovoked perse-
cutions of the Jews were reported from many quarters of
that bloodsoaked continent. They were but the first clashes
arising from calumnies suddenly sprung, but whose trail
leads back to the middle of the nineteenth century.

Within a year anti- Jewish feeling began to appear in
England where the Jews have had their greatest oppor-
tunity, and in return for which they have rendered loyal
and patriotic service. Antagonists of the late Lord North-
cliffe threw out adroitly-framed hints that he was of Jew-
ish extraction; and inimical factions and countries imme-
diately took this up using it as a text by which to hurl
anathema upon him and the race. The "Times" of London
came out with an extended notice of one of the most perni-
cious of the many printed attacks upon the Jews, which
book included the matter which, since, has been separately
printed as a pamphlet, and is now known to history as
"The Protocols".

This matter, which but for its vicious character and
the lives it has already cost and endangered, might well be
called the greatest of literary hoaxes. The book was
caught up and printed in several languages and circulated
all over Europe. Copies found their way to the Western
hemisphere. To their credit it must be said that many
heads of European Governments recognized the peril of a
free distribution of a work of this character, and forbade
the printing and circulation of it. This, however, con-
tinued, and the contents of the strange documents soon
became the popular topic of the notable drawingrooms in
the great cities of the world. They began to figure as the
theme of all others in private correspondence. Gossip soon
carried the word from capital to capital, through the
medium of persons honest enough, no doubt, in their inten-
tions, but who were horrified by the perfidy of the Jews as

12 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

accused by these "Pr otocols". Now these proved to be the
yeast that has since set the world in a ferment.

From that moment on the Jews have been put under
the microscope. The motives of the every act of their most
representative men have been impugned, and every short-
coming of thedess worthy members of the race has been
magnified into a concerted movement of the whole Jewish
people that menaces the community and the safety of the
world. Copies of these "Protocols" crossed the ocean.
Soon credulous publishers of the United States were issu-
ing reprints of the vicious sheets, and the poison began to
work down into popular thought. In an astonishingly
short time bookshop windows were featuring in bright-
covered volumes "The Jewish Peril"; "The International
Jew"; "The Jewish Problem", etc.; and, as this sort of
thing was sure to do what it was intended to do, the masses
hurrying by were caught by this exciting matter. They
were all at once suspicious of their neighbor, the Jew* A
feeling of great indignation swept over the country against
the presence here of a so-called treacherous enemy; one
who, certain malevolent sheets would have us believe, was
like to nothing that has been since the days of belching
dragons and the workers in magic. Though the Jews, as
Mr. Roosevelt had said, "have become indissolubly incorpo-
rated in the great arrpy of American citizenship", though
they had given innumerable proofs that they were pre-
pared to make all sacrifice for the country, yet at the first
outcry against them, the first raising of Europe's tarred
stick, there were those who were ready to use that stick
upon the entire race.

The most regrettable part of it all is, that while the
London "Times" which may be said to have started the
ball rolling, i. e., in English-speaking countries, was discov-
ering the fraudulent character of the whole cruel canard,
frankly admitting it and so correcting, as far as might be,

INTRODUCTORY 13

the evil it had been first to do, the American Jew-baiters,
who had found their great opportunity, continued to
arraign the race, and even to the present, have nowhere
admitted their error, if charity may so name proceedings
so scandalous.

As to large numbers the import and history of the
"Protocols" is still an intriguing mystery, it may be well
to outline this here. Their supposed character was that
of an official programme devised by leading Jewish Elders
for world conquest, not by arms, but by moral pollution;
by the reduction of spiritual stamina, if this term may be
used, among non-Jews, who by education in debauchery
of mind and body were to be led on to such self-indulgence,
the Jews, meanwhile to keep themselves morally clean
while performing this diabolical work, until, themselves
rising in spiritual values, the non- Jewish world, of its own
pollutions, would ultimately fall into subjection to the Jews.

The "Protocols" read like the frothings of a madman;
but as mania often causes "sympathetic mania", they
aff ected the minds of many. The London "Times" was
among them. It thought, about 1918, that it perceived
proofs in events which then were taking place that "cer-
tain passages in these "Protocols", had been prophetic;
that the great world-pollution had already begun. What!
exclaimed its editor, "Have we escaped a Tax Germanica'
only to fall into a Pax Judaica" ! and it called for an open
investigation of the documents which purported to be
addressed to Jews, by some learned "Elders of Zion."

An investigation was begun that extended through
the highest channels in Europe and even to the Congres-
sional Library at Washington. The fantastic propositions
contained in these mad documents were traced by devious
paths to a literary lawyer of France, one, Maurice Joly,
who, in 1865 published some imaginary "Dialogues in Hell
between Machiavelli and Montesquieu". It was a satire

14 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

on Napoleonic practices, and the author put some of his
most malicious speeches into the mouth of an imaginary
Jewish Elder. Th? book was confiscated; but it is known
that one copy found its way to Russia even as many copies
of the forbidden "Protocols" have found their way into
other lands, and that a writer there, imbued with a tradi-
tional prejudice against the Jews, copied and embellished
passages from that work and in turn set these on their
devastating way.

The London 'Times" having inaugurated the work,
published on August 16th, 1921, an account of the fraudu-
lent character of the "Protocols" and stated that, after all,
these were only clumsy forgeries. There was ample time
for the cable-united continents to bring the news of this
expose to the Western hemisphere and so invite as prompt
a recantation and as frank on the part of those who, for a
year, had been engaged in the most virulent attacks upon
the Jew. It was not forthcoming. For a year or more
thereafter the Ford periodical continued to trust to the
ignorance of its readers and to detail the ways in which,
it said, the Jews were attempting to pollute the world
through book and bulletin, through magazines; through
moving pictures; through the theatre and even through
music. These -defamatory volumes may still be purchased,
and are even displayed in book-shop windows.

Zola was not more dramatic than were the thundering
"J'accuseV which issued from the West; but Zola's pur-
pose was honest; with righteous resentment, he was
espousing the cause of the much-wronged Dreyfus. That
of the Ford periodical could have no other aim than to
rouse the varying groups of the land to a pitch of alarm
and prejudice which held in it the possibility of bloodshed.
Ancient as well as current history was searched by this
group to find and to fix crime and obloquy on the Jewish
race. The most ordinary act of a Jew, the most kindly,

INTRODUCTORY 15

even the noblest, through these agents have been made to
take on the air of plotting against the peace of society.
A rich Jew dies and leaves his fortune to be devoted to the
redemption of his race through education. He defines his
beneficiaries. They are not all in one spot; but, "Never
mind/' he says: "Go seek them out and help them;" that
is the message he leaves behind to the world But such
phenomenal nobility in a Jew strikes these anti-Semites as
a suspicious circumstance. They instantly raise a cry.
"The rich Jews are educating their less fortunate brothers;
for what purpose?" and promoters of hatreds answer: "In
order that they may become masters of the world. Haven't
you read the Protocols?"

We have been warned by these same factions that the
Jewish press is sowing industriously "The Jewish Idea" :
that it is encouraging Jews to cling still more closely to
their faith; that they are inaugurating a "revival" spirit in
Judaism; that this is inciting Jewish people to a higher
self-esteem; that they are being spurred industrially, and
to educate themselves. Through these means, reacting
upon them, the race will rise mentally, morally, physically.
"But," these agitators protest, "These Jews are getting on
too fast as it is. They no longer cringe before us. It must
be stopped!" What the Jewish press is doing is to hold up
to the Jewish people, to those who but a generation ago
went bowed under the yoke of Eastern despotism, modern
democratic ideals of the rehabilitation of the race by educa-
tion; by self-effort, by faith in their own ideals. This is
exactly what the presses of all other religious bodies, all
other racial and social groups are doing, the majority of
them having at their command far vaster machinery for
the carrying on of their work in the uplift of their people.
The Jewish press is doing its work in open and legitimate
channels, and in the most praiseworthy manner; yet from

16 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

the attacks made upon them, the public can scarcely avoid
regarding their editorial rooms as hotbeds of sedition.

Because an especially conspicuous example of the dar-
ing of the prejudiced, an instance may be cited here of a
Jewish weekly paper, the publisher of which, as a great
war-correspondent, has looked on human suffering from
very serious view-points both in the Jewish quarters of the
old and new worlds and on the battle-fields. He has watched
the clashings of prejudice and from the evidence offered
by various random issues of his publication would seem to
have brought into his publishing enterprise an especially
inspiring and high purpose. Like a declaration of faith,
he puts on the title-page of every issue of his paper, the
question put by Malachi : "Have we not one father ? Has
not God created us all ?" But this publisher has been made
the object of a vicious onslaught, all the more surprising
in that he had previously been a guest of the western
publisher on the Peace Ship which by this time has been
forgotten by the majority.

Something happened on that voyage, however, which
may explain the disfavor into which the editor and his race
subsequently fell. When in mid-ocean, one of the party
predicted that their efforts would meet with no success
abroad where President Wilson was unpopular because he
had restrained the United States from entering the war.
Thereupon, a protest was drawn up, which in its nature
was a censure of and to the President, and the voyagers
were asked to sign it All did so with two or three excep-
tions. One of these was the Jewish editor referred to, who
declined to sign on the ground that such a proceeding was
not only an unprecedented impertinence to the nation's
head, but a disloyal and unpatriotic act. He furthermore
disembarked at the first port the ship made, and, declining
to accept further courtesies at the hands of his host, paid
his own fare home. A similar instance: a native-born

INTRODUCTORY 17

and educated American graduated from Columbia Uni-
versity, and a distinguished humanitarian as well as inter-
national jurist, was similarly pilloried for daring, in the
face of these rancorous attacks upon his race, to ask the
question: "Is ours a Christian Government?"

The Right Honorable David Lloyd George, who, as
one has said, "sees with amazing clearness what must hap-
pen if this course is persisted in, has written in his recent
book "Where Are We Going"? a sweeping protest against
the wide-spread revival of the Jew-baiting spirit. "Of all
the bigotries" he says, "that savage the human temper there
is none so stupid as the anti-Semitic. It has no basis in
reason ; it is not rooted in faith ; it aspires to no ideal ; it is
just one of those dank and unwholesome weeds that grow
in the morass of racial hatreds. How utterly devoid of
reason it is may be gathered from the fact that it is almost
entirely confined to nations who worship the Jewish
prophets, revere the national literature of the Hebrews as
the only inspired message by the deity to mankind, and
whose only hope of salvation rests on the precepts and
promises of the great teachers of Judah. Yet, in the sight
of these fanatics the Jews of today can do nothing right.
If they are rich they are birds of prey. If they are poor
they are vermin. If they are in favor of a war it is because
they want to exploit the bloody feuds of the Gentiles for
their own profit. If they are anxious for peace they are
instinctive cowards or traitors. If thoy give generously >
and there are no more liberal givers than the Jews they
are doing it for some selfish purpose of their own. If they
do not give, then what can one expect of a Jew but avarice?
If labor is oppressed by great capital, the greed of the Jew
is held responsible. If labor revolts against capital as it
did in Russia the Jew is blamed for that, also. If he lives
in a strange land he must be persecuted and pogrommed
out of it If he wants to go back to his own he must be

18 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

prevented. Through the centuries, in every land, what-
ever he does or intends or fails to do, he has been pursued
by the echo of the brutal cry of the rabble of Jerusalem
against the greatest of all Jews "Crucify him" ! No good
has ever come of nations that crucified Jews. It is a poor
and pusillanimous sport, lacking all the true qualities of
manliness, and those who indulge in it would be the first to
run away were there any element of danger in it"

This is an admirable protest against the most unjust
and most unwarrantable prejudice which the late history
of the world has shown; which appears, moreover, to be
increasing in particularly significant quarters; but can a
few paragraphs of generalities, however, strong and red-
blooded, overtake and dislodge from the human mind the
multipled and widely distributed vilifications which the
book press of the world has been issuing for now six years
and the insidious reasoning of which may well blind the
unthinking into an acceptance of them?

Let us consider for a moment the arguments set forth
by Mr. Hilaire Belloc. This author views the efforts of
the Jews in high places to uplift the less fortunate of their
race as so menacing that, if it is allowed to go on gather-
ing momentum "Civilization presently will not be able to
cope with it." Nor is this all In finished language he
proceeds to press the need for "segregating the Jews,
either by persuading them to go peacefully into a separa-
tion from non-Jews ; or, if they will not, civilisation will
oblige them to it by compulsion!" This, if you please, in
the year of our Lord, 1922 !

This author, who, indeed, has uttered other works as
feverish against other human groups, and for which he
has been roundly chided by the conservative and reasoning
forces of England, looks upon the Jew as being entirely
"different from ourselves" not as a Frenchman is differ-
ent; not as a Greek, an Italian, a Spaniard may be said to

INTRODUCTORY 19

be different, but "as a Chinaman, or a negro, or an Esqui-
maux". Hejgecifically refuses to consider the fact which
is the common possession of the informed, that ever)
spiritual concept which western civilization lives by today,
has come to 'it through the Jew. He is as definite in stating
that he Has' no "interest in Jewish literature, a rather dam-
aging admission, it would seem; for, as innumerable
authorities in this field have testified, Mr. Wells and ex-
President Eliot among many others, as will hereinafter be
shown, in the Hebraic literature is contained the wisdom
of the world; the kernel of all education.

Throughout his volume Mr. Belloc's determination,
expressed with all the dogmatism of a bigot of the Middle
Ages, is to warn the world against the Jew, and to menace
the Jew with what will happen if he does not slink away
of his own accord. Rising to a paroxysm, he presently
goes so far as to say: "We have already a formidable
minority prepared to act against the interests of the Jews,
which, in all probability, will become and that shortly, a
majority; for if the quarrel [which the non-Jew is thus
seeking with the Jew] is allowed to rise unchecked and, to
proceed unappeased [this word is noteworthy] we shall
come unexpectedly and soon upon one of those tragedies
which have marked for centuries this peculiar people and
ourselves! 9 ... It should be said, parenthetically that
the Jews' peculiarities bear a remarkable resemblance to
those of the rest of the human species, even when exhibited
under such false glasses as these strange authors employ.

It is unnecessary to point out what Mr. Belloc em-
phasizes so plainly, namely that his is not the raving of
one who is self-deluded and who speaks for himself alone;
but of one who speaks for others who are possibly under
the impression that the soil is already prepared for such
seditious matter, and who make through him an open
threat that if a quarrel, which such unblushing attacks so

20 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

easily might provoke breaks out, the Jews will pay for such
human indignation as they may be unable to restrain, by
slaughter. It should be equally unnecessary to point out
the need for rousing the fundamental good sense of the
fair-minded, who, when the test comes, are usually in the
vast majority, to see the injustice of allowing these perni-
cious appeals to continue. It is not enough, for it has no
appreciable effect upon the great public who have read and
listened to these modern preachers of persecution, to dis-
miss their utterances as the merest triumph of irrational
impulses over intelligence. It is not enough that the injury
is admitted in the quiet of the friendly circle; too many, as
Addison is said to have done, speak justly but faintly. The
evil thing has gone abroad. The barbaric instinct, as a
recent publicist has said, is coming West; it has pressed
forward from behind the Russian boundaries and lingers
to gather force at the borders of the Rhine, A counteract-
ing common sense should be brought into the situation
before these unrecoverable diatribes of lawless and mali-
cious minds have worked a mischief that is beyond repair ;
before they are transmuted into deeds that may set a shame
upon the forehead of today's civilization. It boots us
nothing to reiterate the Biblical wisdom as to the danger
that a house runs which is "divided against itself." Gro-
tius has put that proposition in more modern legal form in
his statement that society cannot subsist unless all parts of
it are defended by mutual forbearance and goodwill ; but,
whatever the form, it is a commonly accepted truism;
nevertheless the world is imperilled today for lack of the
application of its own proven axioms. If the present acri-
mony were displayed against bad Jews only, who deserve
to be reprobated equally with bad non-Jews, and that not
because they are bad Jews but because they are bad men,
none could take exception to it; but, as Mr. George has
pointed out, this is not the case. A kind of vitriolic rancor

INTRODUCTORY 21

is being sprayed over the whole Jewish people. We are
asked today to accept the statement that all Jews, the world
over, are committing, or planning to commit frightful and
treacherous crimes against organized governments. We
are told that these crimes, alleged to have been committed
or which are in process of being committed are so crafty,
so subtle as to demand, not merely eternal vigilance, but a
craft superior to the Jews' own in order that this guilty
people may be circumvented. What is really required is a
willingness and zeal to investigate the charges, and those
who make them, and who, in so doing reveal themselves
as possessing a craft at least equal to that which they
ascribe to the Jews; for, while dealing in the scurrilous
and making their basic accusations to appear as a peril
sudden to today, they have been merely manipulating very
old matter indeed ; charges which, in fact, were ancient his-
tory two thousand years ago.

In the chapters that follow some of these specific
charges will be taken up which have re-appeared in recent
years against the Jewish people, and will be offset by facts
which all the right-minded should become possessed of at
this time. Meanwhile, it will not be amiss to direct their
attention to the venerable age of the charges which, in the
hands of the unscrupulous, have become again living
themes, and have been made to appear as matter of current
importance and interest

One of the most interesting of the documents that have
come down to us from the ancients is the fiery rebuke of
Flavius Josephus (written about 90, A. D.) to the derisive
Apion, who had made then a vicious attack upon the whole
Jewish race. The methods Apion employed were identical
with those re-employed by the authors already mentioned
as the spokesmen for the anti-Semitism of today. Apion
was an Egyptian who frequented the courts and upper
society of Athens and Rome, where the patrician and

22 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

scholarly Jew, Josephus, notwithstanding the unpopularity
of his race, enjoyed an esteem and favor which lesser men

envied.

Apion, who, but for this attack would long ago have
perished from the memory of man, appears to have gath-
ered from Apollonius, who lived about 300 B. C. ; also from
Posidonius, Cicero, and Manetho the Chaldean, who lived
about 150 B. C; consequently from an array of witnesses
who began some two hundred and forty years before
Apion's own time, every disadvantageous accusation that
had accumulated against the Jews of earlier as well as of his
own time. These he caused to be published in all direc-
tions. We can measure the effect of this upon the old
Athenian and Roman worlds, by fancying what would hap-
pen if some scribe of today were to gather all the objec-
tionable things that have been said about the Americans
up to the present or, for that matter about any other
modern people, mass them and set them before a public
ever keen for the dramatic, ever avid to scent catastrophe,
or to spring to strife against a fancied enemy!

Thanks to this rejoinder by Josephus to the malice of
Apion, a useful parallel may be offered between those
ancient and the basic modern charges against the Jews,

Retailed by Apion, 93 A. D. By zpth and zotk century accusers,

(1) That Jews hate all Gentiles. (1) That Jews hate all Christians.
(Gentiks means foreigners, or

strangers.)

(2) That they are and always have (2) That they are cowards and will
been cowards, lack courage, and not fight

are headstrong. m

(3) That they are ignorant and un- (3) That they are ignorant tradi-
cultivated; barbarous. tionalists.

(4) That they cannot lay claim to (4) That they have never invented
having invented anything of anything worth while.

value to mankind.

(5) That they have not participated (5) That they have had no share m
in the work of civilization. the building up of civilization,

(6) That they have no public spirit. (6) That they are not public spirited-

(7) That they lack patriotism. (7) That they have no patriotism.

(8) That they are irreligious. (8) That they have no moral law.

(9) That for ritual purposes they (9) That for ritual purposes they
kill Greeks. kill Christian children,

etc., etc.

INTRODUCTORY 23

The parallel might be lengthened, but is this not suffi-
cient? Does it not show the lengths to which the modern
addict to prejudice will go to attain his unholy end? Does
it not show the imposture by which the credulous public
is being misled into a dangerously false state of mind, and
the need for acquainting ourselves with the Jew's real place
among the builders of Civilization?

CHAPTER II
The Jew as Soldier, Citizen and Patriot

"When with true American enthusiasm we recall
the story of our War for Independence and rejoice
in the indomitable courage and fortitude of our Rev-
olutionary heroes, we should not fail to remember how
well the lews of America performed their part in the
struggle, and how, in every way, they usefully and
patriotically supported the interests of their new-found
home. Nor can zve overlook, if we are decently just,
the invaluable aid cheerfully contributed by our Jew-
ish fellow-countrymen in every national emergency
which has since overtaken as."

GROVER CLEVELAND.
(In address delivered at Carnegie Hall, November 30th, 1905)

WITH a vast heap of anti-Semitic tomes before one,
a thought sharpens in the mind, of surprise at
the unwisdom of which the embittered and mendacious
are guilty when they publish in a volume or set of volumes,
their varied and voluble venom which first had appeared
in the more transient form of newspaper or magazine arti-
cles; for now what appeared startling, even terrifying 1
when administered in small doses, under "feature" head-
ings, when seen en masse assumes the appearance of a
mere exhibition of bile. The matter in a book may be
matched, "statement for statement and its discrepancies
compared, though few readers would take the trouble to
preserve and compare the utterances from week to week,
or from month to month that appear in what is spoken of
collectively as "the press".

This is what happens with Messrs. Ford and others
in their wholesale criticism of the Jews. Not that Jews
more than others should be immune from criticism. Criti-
cism, as President Coolidge has recently said, is good; but

24

THE JEW AS SOLDIER, CITIZEN AND PATRIOT 25

it attains its best worth when it makes for construction.
Your professional critics in this day of free speech, how-
ever, when given an opportunity to dissect a group or a
race, are like nothing so much as mad mariners with cut-
lasses in hand, who, running amuck slash indiscriminately
right and left. Invariably they lose their judgment and
sense of justice in the enjoyment of an orgy of destruction.
While often ingenious in their thrusts, they are even more
often contradictory to the point of defeating their own
ends. Mr. Belloc, for example, speaks of the great world
war, with which, he says, "the Jews had nothing to do, and
which their more important financial representatives did
all they could to prevent" ; and a few steps farther on he
denounces as dangerous these same representatives, who,
he declares, are liable to foment wars because they control
the metals of the world. He offers questionable "proof " of
this last statement; but makes it plain that though it was
cutting off a profit to themselves these Jews did all they,
could to preserve peace, and to prevent war, which, neces-
sarily would bring them large returns.

It should be said, in passing, that this author, who has
been previously referred to, has elsewhere denounced
another and larger group than the Jews with even more
vehement fanaticism; and, in this instance having worked
himself into an ectasy of sectarian zeal, he has cried out
that "the sword fits the hand of the Church" which institu-
tion, he says, "is never more alive than when it is in arms".
He regrets that Spain did not come to "handgrips with the
Reformation at home, did not test it, come to know it, to
dominate it; to bend the muscles upon it, and to re-emerge
triumphant from the struggle, revivified as was France"
after enjoying her religious wars.

But the thought that follows the reading of such
utterances by a twentieth century author, necessarily is
sober; it may well liold in it somewhat of despair that

26 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

forces still exist, that men pretending to uprightness of
purpose may still lend themselves to the propagation of
hatred and malice and all unkindness; may still find
pleasure and personal profit in disintegrating all hope of a
mutual understanding among the peoples of the world; in
the opening up, as a Ford author puts it, of "new angles
of the 'Jewish Problem' in order "that people may know
the true character of the Jews' influence in America/'

One such "angle" which has not merely been "opened 1 '
but hopelessly split, has to do with Jews in wan By vari-
ous means, including a certain sledge-hammer way of
pounding out his charges, the author leads you to believe
that he is about to give you a study of the race and its part
in the late war. But he does nothing of the sort What
he does is to make statements in which you find an occa-
sional atom of truth which in each case, is imbedded in a
solid block of mis-statement. This is deplorable, for, as
the axiom says : The lie that is part truth is the worst lie
of all to combat.

Beginning with the statement that "Wars are Jews 9
Harvests 3 ' this apostle of prejudice goes on to deny the
race personal courage, though his competitor in the dis-
semination of the same sort of calumny, Mr. Belloc, gives
them credit for having a disproportionate allowance of it
The Ford author, following the Apion charge of two thou-
sand years ago, denies them patriotism, civic worth, and
military bravery, and ascribes to them an avidity for war
arising from a pitiless willingness to trade upon other peo-
ples' tragic experiences and needs. In supporting this
ancient charge this author, and others no better informed
who have followed his lead, disparages the Jewish race so
unsparingly that one wonders that governments, which
know better, should allow the circulation of such unjust,
unfounded, one-sided and disrupting matter through the
mails. One bag of it contains more of the potentials for

THE JEW AS SOLDIER, CITIZEN AND PATRIOT 27

mischief in a commonwealth than a carload of sermons
might hope to counteract.

Such wilful assaults upon a class, or race, or creed in
the United States, for instance, which bases its well-being
on the complete freedom of such classes, races, or creeds,
tends to brand the whole people as pretenders and self-
deceivers, if not hypocrites. In allowing such vilifications
to go unchallenged and unreproved, we negate every pre-
cept which natural laws, religion or philosophy have taught
us. Were the Jews all they are accused of being, what end
would be attained by the spiritual torture which fanatics
would impose upon them ? Mr. Burbank has demonstrated
that the cactus and other prickly plants merely borrow
their thorns for self-protection. When cultivated and pro-
tected from the rough interference of passersby, they shed
them. The need for protection has taught even what we
call inanimate nature to find its own means for keeping
marauders off.

History clearly demonstrates that the world has forced
the growth of the thorn which, it is now complained, exists
in civilization, in the shape of the Jew. He has known
nothing but the need for eternal vigilance for his own
preservation since the time of the Babylon captivity. The
last hundred years have liberated him as no century in his
previous history has done, and yet though while in this
freedom he has contributed unmeasured benefits to the
world as he has from the beginning of known history as
we shall show from time to time as we proceed we come
face to face with the fact that persecution, petty, it may
seem, while limited to calumnious screeds, is taking breath
for a fresh attack upon him; with the fact that in many
parts of Europe it has already gone much farther, and
that unless the conscientious enter upon an enquiry into
the charges made so boldly and sowed so assiduously

28 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

against the Jews, we may see conditions in our own land
which will at least tarnish its often boasted-of glory.

It is time for the American people to come out intelli-
gently in the work of helping to rid the Jew of his thorns,
and in aiding him, rather, in the putting forth of blossoms.
A first step, as the reasonable will agree, which should be
taken toward this end, is for the just-minded to range
themselves outspokenly on the side of truth, at least to the
extent of examining into the nasty charges (no other word
can fitly describe them) which fanatics, counting upon the
ignorance which so generally prevails concerning the real
Jew, so boldly brings against him.

Let us look, for example, into those of that especially
strenuous Jew-baiter, the author of "The International
Jew". To prove his point, which is to make the Jew, appear
as a menace to the nation, and as a coward, he causes it to
be understood that the arguments and "facts" he is about
to project, relate to the late war, and especially to the Jews
of the United States of America as identified with that wan
He begins his dramatic arraignment with a copious excerpt
from the annals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
as presented by a German author nearly two decades ago,
and which relate to events which, he says, took place in
Germany.

.These state that four hundred years ago, and in
Europe "J ews were Army Contractors/' and made profits
by it. The statement is so put as to cause the reader to infer
that they evaded military service, and sought by trickery
of some kind, the commissary department because of the
profits that were to be gained in it By not so much as a
hint does this quoted author, in so far as he is quoted,
suggest that four hundred years ago, and in Europe, Jews
were barred from all European armies; that not only
was this so, but, also, they were forbidden the bearing of

THE JEW AS SOLDIER, CITIZEN AND PATRIOT 29

arms, even for their own self-defense at a time when any
bully might carry his sword or rapier openly.

In Spain, so early as 408 A. D. this exclusion of the
Jews from all things military was in force. Under Omar,
in the eighth century, they were forbidden to serve in the
army in all of the several countries over which the rule of
that potentate extended. In England, in 1181, when all
freemen were compelled to take up arms in defense of the
realm, Jews were forbidden to own, handle, sell, or transfer
arms, hauberks, suits of mail These are instances caught
up at random; but similar conditions existed in every Euro-
pean country and continued there to exist to the middle of
the nineteenth century, and in Russia practically to the
present time.

Nowhere in this quotation from the German is it
hinted that the occasional Jew who served as army con-
tractor in the sixteenth century did so at the command as
often at the plea of governments which needed him, par-
ticularly in the commissary departments, where politically
free and consequent stay-at-home citizens were less well
equipped to serve. "Who travels much/' says the old
adage, "has much to tell." So the Jews, enforced travel-
lers, denied the joy of calling their native lands their
"home", without civic standing or political affiliation, and
wandering, not for centuries but for thousands of years,
could tell much of many lands. They were especially
qualified to serve in that branch of the military service
which called for an acquaintance with markets in which
supplies in large quantities might be purchased. More-
over, there were always near by such markets, Jewish kins-
men as detached, politically, as themselves, who, in various
ways, might cooperate with them and smooth the difficult
processes of providing for the war-needs of the belligerents.

Though dishonest Jews, like dishonest Christians,
rise at every public crisis, seizing it as their "opportunity"

30 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

yet the majority, the honest ones and fortunately the
honest in this race, as in other races, are in the great ma-
jorityof these it may not be said truthfully, that theirs
was a shameful association with European wars. In most
of the wars of the past, and in even more recent times, the
Jews were, and have been helpless victims. Austria, Eng-
land, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, et al, until recently
all refused the Jews citizenship, though they permitted
them the privilege of sojourning in any and all of these
lands, if, and when the governments needed them, and even
then only upon the payment of heavy taxes.

What was more, the grantors of these privileges
might call upon these sojourners to perform services which
non-Jews could not, or would not undertake. It is unneces-
sary to recall that to be in trade in those old aristocracies,
was to be socially demeaned. (If we may place any reli-
ance upon the modern novelist's acquaintance with the
standards of the present day, the same strange idea still
prevails in some countries and circles). Not because the
Jews were cowards, but because they made the best of
conditions that were forced upon them, are they to be
found "in the commissary departments" of the armies of
four and more centuries ago*

But another point that here should be made, Is this :
Jews have been mercilessly conscripted for the fighting
forces by every government under which they lived, cen-
tury after century, when free subjects failed them or their
regular Army ranks grew thin. In rare instances a com-
mander was sufficiently decent to commend them for their
valor as was the case in Venice, after a war with Turkey*

In the light of these facts, of which abundant proof
exists, (and very interesting reading it makes, too) it
should not be possible for anyone to arraign the Jew of this
century upon charges based on events occurring four and
more centuries ago, or to judge him by any but this can-

THE JEW AS SOLDIER, CITIZEN AND PATRIOT 31

tury's standards and records, without adducing all the
facts.

Leaving the German narrator of long-ago events, the
author who would "open up angles" on the part of the
Jews in war, proceeds to strengthen his argument against
today's Jews by telling of two Jewish army contractors
who aided in provisioning the Revolutionary and Civil
wars. Here, omitting all reference to the many of the race
who fought and fell in the ranks, dying, as did non-Jews,
to secure the freedom of the Colonies, the author describes,
in scathing detail, the acquaintance and commerce the two
(related) Jews had with Benedict Arnold. Several Chris-
tians were equally involved but these are put aside as negli-
gible. As a climax to much contempt the author in ques-
tion adds that his two Jews "also traded with Indians."
It is hardly necessary to call attention to the fact that trad-
ing with the redmen was a common occupation of prac-
tically all of the Colonists, and that the foundation of many
American "first families' " fortunes were the outgrowth
of it

A highly theatrical tale is now told of the "treason-
able dealings" of one, in particular, of these two Jews, with
Benedict Arnold. Though, after the traitor's successful
flight, his "accomplice" if he may be called such, "was
acquitted in court of all suspicion; nevertheless/' continues
our author, "he was suspected ever afterwards . -. ,.
What his end was, no one appears to know/'

It will be seen that the statement is so worded as to
cause the reader to infer that this Jew's end may have been
disgraceful or mysterious. What are the facts? That after
his trial, which he personally demanded, he served the
Government in diplomatic missions abroad, once being in-
trusted with despatches to Franklin, then at the Court of
France, and again as vice-consul at Marseilles; and that
the United States Government conferred a grant of several

32 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

hundred acres of Pennsylvania land upon him in recogni-
tion of his services to the country. As there is not a scin-
tilla of evidence to the contrary, it is at least as reasonable
to suppose that he died under his own vine and figtree,
as to conclude that his end was, in any way, one of
obloquy.

Whether this recital be viewed as a sin of omission,
or of commission it provides pretty clear proof that the
ranks of the non-Jews are not wanting in unscrupulous
members, and that when the passion-blinded set out upon a
fanatical course, they will stop at no form of libel. It
seems opportune, in view of this incident, to cite here a
paragraph from a biographical list of the "Wealthy Citizens
of New York City", prepared "for Bankers and Others"
by Moses Y. Beach in 1845, and published by "The Sun".
It relates to Haym Salomon, son of Haym Salomon, of
whom Madison, when Congressman wrote, "I am a pen-
sioner on his bounty".

"If this man" wrote Mr. Beach, "had received his
just due from the National Government, he would now be
worth more than a million dollars. There is now in the
archives of the Government, documentary evidence that his
father, a wealthy Jew of Philadelphia, loaned without
security to the United States a sum not less than $355,000.
Mr. Madison, in his posthumous papers, says that during
the Revolutionary War, at a time when the Government
could not borrow on its own credit, and could not raise a
dollar on its best Virginia Drafts, Mr. Salomon came for-
ward and freely lent his aid in support of the Government",
In a continuation of this case, Mr. Beach refers hand-
somely to the patriotism of the entire family of Salomon;
and to Colonel Franks, one of the Salomon kinsmen, whom
he calls a patriot. Colonel Franks, however, is the officer
who has been held up as a proof that Jews, whether in the
eighteenth or twentieth centuries, encourage wars, in

THE JEW AS SOLDIER, CITIZEN AND PATRIOT 33

order to cull profits; who, because he had dealings, as had
other honest citizens, no doubt, with Benedict Arnold, he
was a traitor whose end was a dubious one.

'( Let us turn to the Jews' status as citizen and patriot
as patriots and citizens of another rank have rated it:

Ex-President Cleveland, in addition to the tribute
which is to be found at the head of this chapter, has said:
"I know that human prejudice, especially that growing out
of race and religion, is cruelly inveterate and lasting; but,
wherever else in the world prejudice against the Jew exists,
there can be no place for it among the peoples of the United
States, unless they are heedless of good faith and recreant
to every pledge involved in our boasted equality of citizen-
ship . . . The Jews have become our fellow-citizens,
and, like us, have at heart the prosperity and safety of our
common country."

If any was capable of understanding and impartially
approximating the value of citizenship, it was the dis-
tinguished John Hay. Endowed with a live conscience
and just mind, as Secretary to President Lincoln he had
unusual opportunities for estimating the many-sided values
of the Jew in the Civil War period. He is quoted as say;
ing that of all immigrants to this nation, none has proven
himself worthier of citizenship than the Jew. Mr. Hay
knew the Jew when he fought in both armies, North or
South, according as his patriotism drew him. Nearly
eight thousand Jewish soldiers are recorded in the twor
armies, exclusive of some six hundred and sixty staff offi-
cers, chaplains, surgeons, etc* Nine generals of the
Jewish race commanded during that internecine strife.
Lincoln bestowed medals on a number of Jewish soldiers
for their bravery during it. Many German- Jewish names
figured in those Civil War lists, as many in the Northern
Army as in the Southern ranks, where were inscribed, too,
the names of native Jews of the fourth and fifth generation

34 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

born in America. These fought side by side with new-
comers of the race, and with their non- Jewish compatriots.

On more than one occasion ex-President Roosevelt
expressed his opinion as to the fine qualities of citizenship
that have been displayed by men of Jewish faith and race.
"Even in our Colonial period," he has written, "the Jews
participated in the up-building of this country, acquired
citizenship, and took an active part in the development of
its foreign and domestic commerce. During the Revolu-
tionary period, they aided the cause of liberty by serving
in the Continental army and by substantial contributions to
the empty treasury of the infant republic. During the
Civil War thousands served in the armies and mingled
their blood with the soil for which they fought/'

He might have added that at the outbreak of the Spanish
War, a regiment of Russian Jews from New York, and a
second from Philadelphia, though this order possibly
should be reversed, were among the first to offer their
services to President McKinley, and that it was generally
believed that the first American blood spilled in that war
was that of a young Jew. / The Washington Star, review-
ing the Jews' history in America, observed that here they
had always been soldiers when the call came. This was
overwhelmingly true during the great world war. An esti-
mate which made a vivid impression upon the writer stated
that from the Jewish people, representing four per cent of
the population of the United States, six per cent of the
enlisted men of a given district in a given time had come.
The number of "honorable mentions" among the Jews for
gallant conduct on the battlefield during the World War
is enormous. There was no branch of the service in which
they did not have part.

Because of the accusation brought against them of
having a leaning towards the Quartermaster's corps, the
present author has carefully .looked into the question to

THE JEW AS SOLDIER, CITIZEN AND PATRIOT 35

see if facts would bear out such an assertion. It is found
that Jewish names figure in every branch of the army
and navy. They served in the ordnance and medical
corps; in infantry and artillery; in cavalry and aviation
corps; in the engineering, dental and ambulance corps.
Less than ten per cent of the whole enlistments from this
citizen group were in the Quartermaster's corps, and these,
generally, represented the more delicate men who were of
much greater assistance in that department than they
would have been in the actual fighting ranks.

The Jew as a soldier is what might be termed a
neglected source of pride to the nation; of joy to the his-
torian and to those who delight in stories of martial
adventure and prowess. It has been so long unfashionable
to praise him that to hear that he can be and often is a
physical as well as a moral hero, strikes those who have
accepted their opinions of him in the usual second-hand
way, with amazement. From the very beginning of his
association with American history, he revealed himself as
a stout fighter.

Asset Levy was the name of this first comer, and he
arrived in New Amsterdam about 1654, some thirty-odd
years after the Mayflower made her historic landing at
Plymouth Rock. He was alive with the true citizen's spirit
which Spain's persecutions and Portugal's in driving the
Jews from Brazil had in no way stifled or subdued. He
was ready to do his part as a citizen when, upon a memor-
able occasion, the call came to the settlers to arm and
defend the tiny hamlet at the end of the Island of Man-
hattan. But, no! says the redoubtable Peter Stuyvesant,
full of old world habits of mind and prejudices; "Jews may
not fight with us. JBut you,, .may .pay a fine for not
doing so 1"

Did Levy submit to this? No! He was not an
ignorant man, and he refused to forego his man's right

36 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION"

and to pay a fine for the privilege of doing so. He argued
the matter, but Stuyvesant was obdurate. Then Levy
appealed to the Dutch Company in Amsterdam which was
financing the new settlement, and among whose directorate
were several of his race, and, eventually, he won his right
to be a man as others were in this new land of the free
and home of the brave !

It should be said, too, that when it became necessary
' to build the "wall" from which Wall Street took its name,
Levy was one of the few who would and could and did
subscribe the sum of one hundred florins toward it. That
determination to fight his way, rather than to sink into
inferiority by the payment of tribute, 'to claim his full citi-
zen's rights, and not buy "privileges" is the base on which
the political freedom of the Jews in America rests today.
An excerpt from "Jewish History in the United States"
which forms part of "The International Jew 33 by Mr. Ford
may prove illuminating here as an example of the strange
history writing, which serves as foundation for much of
the vituperation which has been spilled upon the race. It
reads: "Unwillingly, old Peter Stuyvesant compelled the
Jew [in 1660] to make New York the principal port of
America, and though a majority of New York Jews had
fled to Philadelphia [this occurred 110 years later] most
of them returned to New York [some 25 years later]
instinct seeming to make them aware that in New York
was to be their principal paradise" etc., etc*

Each war that has arisen in the United States, since
Levy insisted upon bearing arms, has had its Jewish as
well as its non-Jewish contingent of fighters. Back in
the Sftninole wars; out on the frontiers, at a time whoi
their numbers were few, there were military heroes of this
race. [.One of them, David de Leon, won his soubriquet,
"the Fighting Doctor/' at Chepultepec, and twice received
the thanks of Congress for his bravery. He was a native-

THE JEW AS SOLDIER, CITIZEN AND PATRIOT 37

born American, graduate of the Pennsylvania University.
Twice when his commanding officer met with disaster, he
led a charge of cavalry "into the cannon's mouth," and
on to victory. There is the case, too, of "Little Frauen-
thal!" whose non- Jewish comrades of the Civil War, up
to a very old age thrilled as they told of how "that little
Jew" stood, never flinching nor blanching, as he filled and
refilled his gun amid a hail of bullets, and went on
shooting.

Nor is this bravery a something characteristic of the
American Jew only. It may be the reawakening of primi-
tive traits in him, but if it is it is an awakening that runs
through the veins of his people the world over; a some-
thing rising as political liberty has become more and more
extended to him. From every army in the recent war you
may gather news of his bravery if you look for it. An
enormous number of Jewish soldiers were honored by- the
Italian King for their military services. France had a
great multitude of Jews in her armies, among them Alfred
Dreyfus, victim years ago of such malicious persecuting
plots as have no counterpart in recent times. He fought
eagerly, and came out of the war with promotion and
honor while the disgraced miscreant Esterhazy, who was
the author of his sufferings, lay hiding and starving in a
London garret, whence he has since gone before the Great
Judge of all.

So early in the World War as 1917, in Austria, four
hundred and seventy Jewish soldiers were decorated for
gallant services, a fact which was brought to light in order
to silence the charge of an Austrian Jew-baiter who
accused the Jews of "lack of enthusiasm for field service."
As an interesting accompaniment to this (and a side-light
which is valuable), at the time when this charge was
brought the knowledge was current among these said-to-be
reluctant Jews that while they were serving their country,

38 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

the Government was transporting their wives mothers,
torn from their little children to distant cities where labor
was needed to keep up with the demand for war supplies.
This was hardly the sort of knowledge which would incite
the normal man to zeal.

When all is said and done it will be found that, no
matter what their race, in the human family when the
martial spirit is invoked, there are "family resemblances
among the heirs of enthusiasm." From the very begin-
ning Jews have produced martial heroes. Abram leads
the list Even the people of Heth hailed him as a mighty
Prince. Whether you read of it in the Scriptures, or in
the account given of it by Josephus, Abram is shown to be
in every way a red-blooded and determined man. Upon
learning that his brother was taken captive, he led forth
his trained men, "born in his house," and pursued the
captors. He overtook them, "and brought back his
brother, and his brother's goods, and the women also, and
the people."

We find him once more at the head of an army not so
unlike those raised among the early settlers of America;
and again his army is made up of his family and house-
hold. This time he is rushing to Lot's aid Against the
Assyrians. We are told that he routed them valiantly, and
that few escaped slaughter, "thereby demonstrating," says
Flavius Josephus, "that victory does not depend upon mul-
titudes, and the number of hands; for the alacrity and
courage of soldiers overcome the most numerous bodies of
men. Abram conquered the Assyrian hosts with no more
than three hundred and eighteen servants, and three of his
friends."

The Laws of Moses have obscured from the general
view that patriarch's record as a warrior-General directing
the military Jrorces of Pharaoh; but non-scriptural his-
torians describe his leadership as wonderful. They tell in

THE JEW AS SOLDIER, CITIZEN AND PATRIOT 39

a spirited manner of his strategem in leading his troops
upon one occasion through a land infested with deadly
serpents. In the story of this feat there is no admixture
of the unreal, or of the superstitions. It is a fascinating
account of early war experiences. It seems that Moses
was obliged to lead his troops across a land which lay
between the Egyptian and the opposing Ethiopian troops,
a sort of no-man's land, which was regarded as impassable
because of the swarms of serpents that infested it Moses,
however, brooding over the problem of how to cross this
territory and get at the enemy, devised a plan by which to
solve it

He caused his troops to catch a number of the ibes, a
native bird which was the one enemy that could engage and
conquer the serpents. They collected, too, a number of
rush baskets. Into each basket he placed and secured one
of the birds. When a sufficient number had been caged,
and all was ready, his troops stole up to the borderline and
let loose the birds, before which the serpents scattered,
many of them prey to their enemies. In this way Moses
secured his passage to the encampment of the Ethiopians,
whom he quickly annihilated. It was long after this tri-
umphant campaign that jealousy began to flame about him,
and to sow such scandalous suspicions concerning him and
his people, that the King presently viewed him with doubt
and even as a possible rival. The history is marvellously
modern and thrilling. There is no grander moment in
the career of the great Lawgiver than that in which, leav-
ing his military glory behind him, and fleeing to the desert,
he is presently seen tending his sheep upon the slopes of
Mt. Sinai, which, through his stay upon it, was to become
immortal.

Coming directly down the Ishmaelitish line we see
military hero after military hero in a blaze of glory. We
may not linger here to consider them, not even General

40 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

Joshua, and his successors; not even David, who rises, a
true prototype of Napoleon. When he comes into view
Israel is but a small country, comprised entirely between
Dan and Beersheba. A few years of war, and he com-
mands the land between the Nile and the Euphrates, prac-
tically all of old Chaldea. We know it today as Syria,
where the Jewish race is again to be found in numbers.

Long after their kingdom was divided, and then lost,
the Jews retained their reputation for being dauntless and
loyal soldiers even to those who had conquered them.
Ptolemy I of Egypt, who took Judea from the weak hands
of a successor to Alexander the Great, showed full appre-
ciation not only of the Judean valor, but of their loyalty
as citizens. He entrusted to them the fortresses of Egypt
which ,he manned with thirty thousand Jews. He be-
lieved, and this because of their deeply religious sense, that
they would keep their charges faithfully against all comers.
It is said, too, that when he desired to secure the Govern-
ment of Cyrene and other Lybian cities to himself, he sent
a party of Jews to hold them for him.

It would seem as if the traditional accusation against
the Jew of cowardice arose among the coarse about this
time, when occurred an incident which was highly ideal
on the Jews' part, highly admirable as religionists of the
most austere piety but deplorable to them in its after
results. Under what has been called the "pacifist" preach-
ing of Ezra, Nehemiah and others, a religious awakening
had occurred among them, which made them place a new
value upon their traditional rites and laws. Among these
was one which forbade them to fight, even in self-defense,
upon the Sabbath. This the generals of Ptolemy I knew.
They decided upon the clever stratagem of attacking Jeru-
salem upon the Sabbath day, when the Jews, too pious to
fight, would be easily overcome. Thetr ruse proved effec-
tive. Because of their idealism, which today would be

THE JEW AS SOLDIER, CITIZEN AND PATRIOT 41

called quixotism, the Jews' military glory was lost. In its
place came derision and scorn from the practical outside
world. For the ribald, and especially for the ignorant, their
"cowardice" has since been a byword, carried down from
age to age, even to the twentieth century A. D.

Yet, despite this stigma, one of their greatest military
men was yet to come in the heroic figure of Judas
Maccabeus. Here again, lovers of martial adventure find
a field that is nothing short of thrilling in its recital of
splendid and fearless deeds, not alone by the great 'Judas
of the Maccabees, but by those of his father. In some
respects he appears as the greater man, as we trace him as
instigator and inciter of his sons to all that they later
accomplished. For a hundred years they gave a period of
glory to Judea, over which they ruled until shortly before
the present era.

The story ,of the old father inciting his stalwart sons
to the re-habilitation of Judea, the drama of it, is marvel-
lously stirring viewed quite aside from its historic values.
From the moment the scene is disclosed, you follow it with
strained attention. You leave it with the recognition that
despite the sadness and suffering which is accented in all
histories of the Jews, theirs is no mean past; rather it is a
mighty one, and unquestionably a mighty military one!
The whole story of the Jews until the period immediately
before the present era may be said to lie between the
soldier's tent and the priest's temple. From the time of
the dispersion as a nation, records are lost of them except
as individual heroes rise against the backgrounds of other
nations. Of these, however, there are many notable ones.
Sometimes they appear under the banners of a Hindu
prince; sometimes fighting in Turkey; some identified as
"soldiers of fortune" who fared forth to many lands in
search of adventure, but especially for the opportunity
of being free like other men.

42 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

One of the most spectacular of these was Emin Pasha,
born Schnitzer, who was, by turns, explorer, physician,
warrior, and scientist. Scarcely arrived at manhood, he
set out for Turkey, pausing awhile at Constantinople.
Next we find him in Egypt, physician and aide to Gordon,
who was then Governor of the Equatorial Provinces. It
was Gordon who gave Schnitzer his new name of Emin
Pasha. Through all Gordon's long and dangerous conflict
with the Mahdi, Emin Pasha was with him, even to his
death at Khartoum. Thereafter he becomes a figure of world
importance, commanding the Gordon forces with unlimited
freedom of action conferred upon him by the British Gov-
ernment. Throughout his continued strife with the in-
domitable Mahdi the cables rang with such accounts as
they were able to get of him. His gallantry was the won-
der of the world which shortly sent expeditions to relieve
hi m Stanley from England and a group of men of Ger-
many but so resolute was he to carry out alone the
campaign with the Mahdi, that, in spite of the desperate-
ness of the situation, he almost resented the aid that came
to him. A strange and colorful career, his was, that
ended, no one knows how, somewhere in the Congo State,
All that was known of that end was the tale brought in
by an Arab, who told of the assassination of Emin Pasha
somewhere in the back country.

There were Jews in the armies of Marshal Saxe; in
the Napoleonic wars, many in all the contending armies.
Of those who fought in 1815 with the German forces,
Prince von Hardenberg wrote to Count de Grothe:
"Young men of the Jewish faith have been companions-
in-arms of their Christian fellow-citizens, and we can point
to examples among them of true courage and complete
disregard of the perils of war no less than among the
rest of the inhabitants. Their women, also, have mingled
with the Christians in sacrifices of every kind."

THE JEW AS SOLDIER, CITIZEN AND PATRIOT 43

Similar appraisals fell to the Jews' share for their par-
ticipation in war under Wellington. It was estimated that
in times of peace and prior to the breaking out of the last
war, some ninety thousand Jews were in the military
service of the different European Governments. Nothing
better demonstrates the patriotism of which the Jews are
capable than the loyal spirit shown by the immigrants who
have settled here, to their native lands. It takes nothing
from their love for their adopted country that their hearts
retain tender remembrances of their earlier homes.
Rather it holds the assurance of a stability of sentiment as
strong for America when they shall have taken root here.
German Jews in the United States, notwithstanding cen-
turies of very harsh treatment received at the hands of
Germany, like Caesar, who forgot all injuries and remem-
bered only the kindnesses he received, have forgotten
their injuries and remembered that country with tender-
ness as the nest from which they have flown. Surely a
natural sentiment in a well-constructed human being!
Russian Jews who for generations have starved and
cowered under the tyranny of Russian misrule, refer with
moist eyes to that country as their motherland. The Jews
who came first to America felt the same traditional love
for Spain and Portugal; but by the time of the Revolu-
tionary war, all of them were rooted in America. So loyal
were those in New York, that, when the British took pos-
session of that city, rather than to enjoy the protection of
those enemies of the country's independence, almost to a
man they emigrated to Philadelphia, to Newport, where
notable memorials of those early patriots are still to be
found.

Forty soldiers of the race were decorated by the
Sultan of Turkey, early in this century. Italian Jews
fought witH Garibaldi. They were part of the Royal
Italian Army that marched into Rome in 1870. Many

44 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

Italian Jews have risen from the ranks to places of dis-
tinction in other lines. General Giuseppe Ottolenghi, who
died in the early part of this century, was a gallant soldier,
who became first Senator, and then Minister of Wan
French Jews fought in the Franco-Prussian war, and
German-born Jews were with the German Army which
entered Paris in 1872.

Wherever they have had the semblance of a reason
to call a land their home, they have given that country
their love, their devotion, their lives in her times of need,
patriotism with them is a creed. All their religious teach-
ings impress this upon them as a necessity. They have
before them constantly in their Rabbinical teachings, God's
admonition, as sent to them while captives in Babylon, by
Jeremiah, then in Jerusalem: "Seek the peace of the city
whither I have caused you to tie carried away captive, and
pray unto the Lord for it; for in the peace thereof shall ye
have peace"

There is no reason to doubt, even though from time
to time a speckled sheep appears among such a flock, the
purity of heart, of motive, and of life of the great majority
of Jewish people ; no reason to look for disloyalty or lack
of patriotism among them, nor any ground upon which a
doubt may be cast as to their courage; rather, reason after
reason presents itself for believing that the Jews, as a
whole, represent a real spiritual asset to any country which
makes living reasonably comfortable for them. From the
utterances of the first Jew to arrive in this land, they have
proven and pledged their loyalty to it To George Wash-
ington the Newport colony declared themselves as follows :
"This Federal Union, whose base is philanthropy, mutual
confidence and public virtue, we cannot but acknowledge to
be the work of the great God * * * Deprived as we hitherto
have been of what should be the inalienable rights of free
citizens, we now, with a deep sense of gratitude to the

THE JEW AS SOLDIER, CITIZEN AND PATRIOT 45

Almightly Dispenser of all events, behold a Government
erected by the majesty of the people, a Government which
to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance,
but generously affords to all, liberty of conscience and the
immunities of citizenship, deeming every one, of whatever
nation, or tongue, to be an equal part of the great govern-
ment machine." -

During the world war the Jews of the United States
came together, as all other religious groups did,' and
formed a Welfare Board. Its first announcement reads:
'Trii^arily^^ purpose of the Jewish Welfare, Board is
to helg Am^rjga, ^vm tfre, ,war." An American Rabbi at
that time was asked to give his definition of America. He
replied: "To me America is all that, the submerged .races
of the world wish to be and cannot be ; the concrete realiza-
tion of what the ages have hoped and labored for. That is
my definition. It is a creed. It is a challenge. God built
a continent of glory and filled it with untold treasures. He
carpeted it with soft-rolling prairies, and pillared it with
thundering mountains. He studded it with sparkling
springs and traced it with winding streams, graced it with
deep shadowed forests and filled these with song. Then
He called unto a thousand peoples * * * and they came
from the ends of the earth each bringing a gift and a hope.
The glow of adventure was in their eyes and the glory of
hope within their souls. Out of the labor of men and the
bounty of earth, out of the prayers of men and the hopes
of the world, in love God fashioned a nation, blessed it
with a purpose sublime and called it 'America 3 /'

The reaction of such preachments and such dogma
upon the Jews' daily life cannot fail to produce impregnable
patriotism. We have dwelt upon the military side of their
citizenship for reasons which will have been seen. In
their purely civic relationship they are the most active of
all citizens. They are in every movement that has to do

46 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

with the public good. They fill offices which others may
crave but will not contest for. Above all men do the
Jews regard political service honorable. They appreciate
political freedom, so new to them, as a class. They go to
the polls while only too many non-Jews go fishing. As we
shall presently indicate, they are in the vanguard of all
civic improvements. They create industries, demands for
them, and markets for the fruits of them. But this aspect
of the Jew and civilization we shall consider in our next
chapter.

CHAPTER III
The Jew in Industry

"The recurrence of the Jewish New Year is always
a reminder of the debt which the modern world owes
to the Jewish people and their wonderful national
culture. The occasion is one of significance, not
merely to the people of the Jewish faith and race, but
to all who have been the inheritors of some part in the
splendid estate of leadership, spiritually, and the serv-
ice which they have given to the world for the com~
mon advantage"

CALVIN COOLIDGE,
President of the United States of America.

TURNING to the Jew in industry, we come upon him
in a field in which he has been misrepresented with
especial acrimony. None has done this in a more petty
and unworthy spirit than has a writer in the "World's
Work." This author's aversion to "the exotic mass of
Jews which the steamships," as he puts it, "began dumping
on the Atlantic seaboard forty years ago" causes him to
go to great lengths in making disparaging comparisons be-
tween those victims of Russian tyranny in the nineteenth
century and the first immigrants to arrive in America in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The reasonable
will at once recognize the impossibility of making any com-
parison whatsoever between the two groups; but this au-
thor, none the less, has attempted it. He says that the
first immigrants had "the pioneering spirit" which the
more recent comers lack.

"Take the original settlers," he says, "those colonists
from the British Isles, who at the time of the Revolution,
formed 80 per cent of the young country's population/'
"and whose descendants form not far from 60 per cent of
its population today. We first see these hardy frontiers-

47

48 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

men in the seventeenth century, making accessible to
civilization the Atlantic seaboard/' (He has forgotten
that the first pioneer to step upon that coast was a Jew,
and this in the late fifteenth century.) These hardy fron-
tiersmen, says this author, pressed westward, founding
cities and great industries, which, he adds, was "real im-
migration" as was the coming of later Scandinavians and
Germans, and, presently the Irish and the Italians. But
the Jews, he goes on (whose communings with their God
appear to be particularly offensive to him) stayed in
cities, when "three thousand miles of continent beckoned
to them," and where, "like Jacob of old, they could have
practiced sheep herding and all the arts of husbandry; but,
apparently, only the teeming cities had any attraction for
them."

This is loose reasoning, but worse still, it is dis-
tortion of facts. In the first place there may have been
three thousand miles of unused territory in the west in
1880-1-2 but we need no over-sharp imagination to fancy
what would have happened to the Jewish newcomers of that
period had they attempted to take possession of it as the
pioneers took possession of the primeval land two centuries
earlier. Most of these late arrivals, moreover, were refu-
gees, whose passage was paid for them by the pitying; who
in addition, had planned for them opportunities for living
nearer to groups' of their own race who could under-
stand and help themt But here, again, with a view to
alarming the public, other bitter accusations have been
made of the "organized movement into America of masses
of Jews" and an unworthy significance has been given to
tiie fact that rich Jews and aid societies had furnished
means to these Jews (forty-three years ago), to fly the
terrors of Russia and seek asylum in the United States.

The fact is entirely overlooked, in these bitter attacks

THE JEW IN INDUSTRY 49

upon the Jews, that the progeny of this same "exotic mass"
that then was "dumped upon the Atlantic seaboard, have,
in many instances risen as scientists, and in various pro-
fessional avenues today are to be found all over the land.

It is worth a moment's turning aside from these per-
verted views of the Jew, these oversights, if so they may
be termed, of the actual value to the country of those im-
migrants of the Ws, to look at the subject through the
dispassionate eyes of a thoughtful economist. Speaking of
immigration in general, Professor Commons, in his "Races
and Immigrants in America" says : ' We have seen the
conditions in their foreign homes which spurred the emi-
grants to seek America . . . religious persecution,
race oppression, political revolution; taxation, famine
poverty conspiring to press upon the unprivileged masses
and to drive the more adventurous across the water. But
it would be a mistake should we stop at that point and look
upon the migration ... as only a voluntary move-
ment to better their condition." He then traces the im-
migration that has peopled America.

'While various motives and inducements have always
worked together/' he continues, "and it would be rash
to assert dogmatically the relative weight of each, yet
to one who has noted the circumstances, it is scarcely an
exaggeration to say that even more important than the
initiative of immigrants, have been the efforts of ship-
owners and Americans to bring and to attract them.
Throughout our history these efforts have been inspired
by one grand, effective motive that of making a profit
upon the immigrants. The desire to get cheap labor, to
take in passenger fares, and to sell land have probably
brought more immigrants than the hard conditions of
Europe, Asia and Africa have sent. It is to this mer-
cenary motive that we owe our manifold variety of races.

50 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

.... Working people of the colonial period were hood-
winked and kidnapped by shippers and speculators who
reimbursed themselves by indenturing them to planters and
farmers. . . ."

Professor Commons cites the means employed by
William Penn and his lessees, John Law and the Dutch
East India Company, to people his new estate in America.
Pity for the persecuted mingled with his project, with-
out doubt; but a need for the development of real estate
lay side by side with it and led to the prepaying of the
passage of the emigrants who were to act as pioneers
for civilization. Professor Commons adds : "In the nine-
teenth century new forms of induced migration appeared.
Victims of the Irish famine were assisted to emigrate
by local and general governments and by philanthropic so-
cieties, and both Irish and Germans whose migrations be-
gan in the middle of the century, were, in this measure,
exceptions to the general rule of immigration for profit."

It should here be recalled that the refugees who were
"dumped on the Atlantic seacoast" in the '8o's were, like-
wise, exceptions, and that their predecessors met with a
scarcely kinder treatment than the Jews have since received.
They, too, were reviled in the press 1 of the day, and racial
ill-feeling here and religious strife there will be come upon
by those who are sufficiently interested to look into the
history of last century.

The fact is, as Professor Commons makes plain, that
the industrious emigrant arriving in a 'strange land in the
modern world is always resented and rebuffed, and tHe
more vigorously as he at once sets out to repair his fortunes
and to "dig in" for a permanent Home This attained, his
own next step is to keep others out. History repeats itself
in tHese economic facts in every land and in every age.
It also 'sHows tHat in tHe course o'f time no means Have

THE JEW IN INDUSTRY 51

been considered beneath the dignity of the first arrivals
which would enable them to besmirch and hinder the pro-
gress of those who came after. It is a wise precaution,
then, before accepting the statements of the passionately
prejudiced, to look into the economic facts of the case.
What appears to be religious and racial antagonism (Pro-
fessor Commons makes plain), and what the blindly fan-
atical regard as social and political animosities, are actu-
ally, at bottom, economic problems. An examination into
the charges brought against the Jews today by each and
every writer will reveal this economic factor at the root
of every slander, of every accusation.

It is in the field of economics that the interests of all
men meet, that all conflicts arise. All sorts and conditions
of men operate in it from the humblest artisan to the
richest manufacturer; from the simplest handicraftsman
to the distributor of the finished product. The Jews, enter-
ing this field have prospered signally. A very high per-
centage of them have shown themselves skilled workmen,
notable for their sobriety, frugality and willingness to
work hard, and these qualities have brought their own
reward. But, as a result, we find the modern Jew-baiter
rising up to impugn their motives and methods at every
point. There are those, on the one hand, who declare
that the Jews are crowding into, and, by inference, crowd-
ing others out of many trades; and, on the other, those
who declare that the Jews will not work at all if they
can help it, but will, if they can make the opportunity, live
by the sweat of non-Jews. This, in the very beginning, is
belied by both Jewish practice and Jewish preaching. Let
us look at this from the records of the race :

From the first chapters of their Scriptures work has
been commended by the Jewish teachers, and idleness con-
demned. "The sleep of a laboring man is sweet;" '"He

52 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

that gathereth by labor shall increase;" are among the
Biblical proverbs of this people. In post-Biblical writings
labor is be-praised by the Rabbinical teachers. "Who fails
to teach his son a trade," says a Talmudic verse, "teaches
him to become a thief." The urge to industry again
appears in the parable of the "ten talents." Contrary to
the opinion so insistently projected by those inimical to
the race, the Jews who labor with their hands are many
times more numerous than are those who enter com-
mercial lines, into which they are constantly forced, how-
ever, by discriminations that shut them out, even in these
"enlightened" days, from the trade and professions open
to the non- Jewish applicant Forced into "individualistic"
enterprise they are next attacked because of this "tend-
ency" to individualism and to petty mercantile pursuits;
or, as the "World's Work" author has put it, because of
their preference for becoming "shoe-string capitalists"
rather than to be numbered among the idle and dependent.
Look where you will, as Mr. David Lloyd George has
said, the disposition is evident to mis-state the Jew; to
misrepresent him, and to make him again the victim of
prejudice deliberately roused. The ways of the public
are barred by hysterical criers, announcing that the Jews
are seizing upon for the anti-Semites are frantic users of
the superlative, the economics of the western hemisphere
so boldly as to threaten its future; that the rising tide
of Jewry one of the smallest peoples, numerically, in
the world, will shortly overwhelm the vast human family
unless "something be done/' That "something" has been
pointed out by >tn Belldc. The sane, getting this whole
commotion in a proper perspective will scarcely fail to
see the resemblance it bears to Kingsle/s "children of
Prometheus who go telling folk what will happen, instead

THE JEW IN INDUSTRY 53

of looking to see what has already happened"; or, that
author's Pantheon, wherein all the philosophers and scrib-
blers are busy contradicting each other.

On one side the maddest alarmists trumpet the warn-
ing of the "Jewish Peril/' and on the other the super-
ficial and preoccupied deride both the complainants and
the complained of. In the meantime, the voices of the
first drown those of the second, and, even more effectively,
those of still another class who estimate the Jews at a
higher value. A Ford periodical scents economic disaster
in the Jews' appearance of prospering, and sows fears over
the whole land; while the utterance of the Chicago Mayor,
who sees blessings in that prosperity, and states it openly
in the press, is negligibly given to the public, and passes
unread by those whose views might well have been modified
into a kinder appreciation of this people. The present
mayor of that western municipality, which has a large
Jewish population, has said: "Their notable accomplish-
ments in industry and all branches of human endeavor
which constitute the basis of every civilization, have secured
them an honorable position in this city . . . They are, in
addition, a God-fearing people and have contributed
greatly to the growth and development of this city/' Gov-
ernors of states and the heads of nations have again and
again told in unstinted praise of the value of the Jew to
the nation and community. Preachers have added their
testimony of the same sort; nevertheless the honest seeker
after the truth is confronted on every side by the most
contradictory proclamations of prejudiced sowers of sedi-
tion, who attribute to the Jews a super-craftiness which
would make them, if true, the most dangerous mortals
imaginable. They are accused, even the humblest of the
race, of possessing the most incomparable cunning and
selfishness; of acting in stealth in all things'; of seeking

54 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

to subvert governments; of destroying industry; of being
a race which now menaces the world's well-being; and,
again, as through the pen of Houston Stewart Chamber-
lain and his follower, the editor of the 'World's Work"
they are held up as inferior, mentally, to other races, and
stupid even to delinquency.

Surely it should be apparent that bigotry and not
reason or honest purpose is at the bottom of these labori-
ously worked out attacks upon this race. They present a
very confusion of accusations. At times it would seem as
if, in their determination to prove the Jews models of
stupidity and its opposite, aridity, these modern fanatics
tumble pell-mell into each others' ways, reveal what they
take pains to conceal, under ingenious and even momen-
tarily blinding arguments. For example, H. S. Chamber-
lain, son-in-law of Richard Wagner, himself a notable Jew-
baiter as well as musical genius, in one breath accuses
the Jews of 800 and 900 A. D. of having been too stupid
to perceive the mercantile value of paper, and in the next
of having perceived it, but, out of mercantile greed, of hav-
ing held back the knowledge of it from the rest of Europe.

There is a common characteristic displayed by all anti-
Semites, a propensity to run back into ancient and indis-
tinct history, into that, usually, of thousands of years ago,
for proofs of the low worth of the Jew of today. This we
shall have occasion to recall as we go on, in order to show
the lengths to which Mr. Chamberlain has frequently gone
to dispraise the Jew in the various avenues of effort in
which the human race has operated. For the moment we
may examine into his treatment of this people in their rela-
tion to paper and to printing, lines of industry in which the
race has been conspicuously active and important in late
centuries.

THE JEW IN INDUSTRY 55

In the ninth and tenth centuries there were numerous
lusty races in Europe each one of which was in far better
position to examine into the value of and undertake the
development of this industry than were the Jews, who
had neither political nor domiciliary rights, nor even an
unrestricted choice of trade or occupation in which they
might engage. But, in a manner entirely his own a daz-
zling manner, too, as we are assured in the introduction to
the Chamberlain book written by Lord Redesdale, G. C V.
O., K. C B., etc. this author is able to twist facts in such
way as to inculpate the Jews as hoarders upon whom rests
the responsibility for the belated appearance of paper in
Europe, and, in consequence, for the still further delay
in the invention of printing. The Jew, Mr. Chamberlain
asserts, kept back "the flow of intelligence" in the west, in
order to preserve paper for his own and sole use in the
the form of bills of exchange and promissory notes. This
invites a looking into.

It appears that the Indo- Aryans invented paper made
of rags which improved upon an earlier and simpler prod-
uct of China, manufactured from 1 ' papyrus. By the natural
migrations of peoples, but chiefly by utilizing the knowl-
edge of war captives and refugees, Samarcand, in time be-
came the paper-making centre of the East. Haroun-al-
Raschid, contemporary of Charlemagne, and a Semite, or
half-Semite, as Mr. Chamberlain might say, though he
was a Mossulman and not a Jew in the course of time be-
came interested in the Indo- Aryan product and built a
factory in Bagdad for its manufacture. But he guarded
carefully the formula for making it. Now, Mr. Chamber-
lain says, "wherever the Arabs went, paper accompanied
them, particularly to Moorish Spain where Jews, for a
long time, were predominant, and where paper can be
proved to have been in use from the tenth century. Hardly

56 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

any came to Teutonic Europe, and, if it did, it was only as
a material of unknown origin/'

This is both singular and contradictory ; for the Teu-
tons, who in Mr. Chamberlain's opinion were from the
beginning, the superiors of all other races in Europe, were
sprung from the Eastern Indo-Germanic stock and should
have been in possession of very early knowledge of paper
manufacture, especially in its primitive form. But Mr.
Chamberlain very adroitly directs his readers from a pos-
sible enquiry into this, and points them towards Spain, and
the Arab who, he says, carried paper to that country. The
chances are as ten to one that the Jews and not the Arabs
brought the first paper to Spain. Though some among
the Spanish Jews had lived there, legends say, since the
days of Nebuchadnezzar, yet Jews were not then the dom-
inant figures in Spain which later they became. A few of
them were rich and powerful; but, until well into the tenth
century, Babylonian teachers of the Jewish race were cen-
tered at Sora, to which the eyes of the Jews of the world
were turned. The Jew in general had no national home,
and he became the great link between the east and the
west in that period, not withholding, but spreading knowl-
edge, intellectual and spiritual as well as commercial,
between the lands he had commerce with.

Saadiah, the great builder-up of the Jewish religion
of that period, presided at Sora. It was the Mecca for
Jews of that century, and for Arabian and other philos-
ophers who would take issue with Saadiah, and disciples
who would profit by his learning. It is certain that the
most intelligent Jews of those times from all lands made
pilgrimages to this school, and continued to do so until
the disturbances in the surrounding world began to affect
them unpleasantly. Then the Talmudic school and all
its interests were transported to Spain. Meanwhile, de-

THE JEW IN INDUSTRY ' 57

fined routes of travel had been trodden between the East
and the West, over which, thereafter, Jewish merchants
on foot, or camel or on courser, travelled regularly.

When Christianity and Islam arrived at scimitar and
javelin points, the Jews were called upon to play an im-
portant role. A Christian was not permitted to enter
Islamic territory, nor a Mossulman to enter that of Chris-
tians. The Jews being of neither faith, were, in conse-
quence, in demand as messengers and interpreters between
the two; as mediums in trading between the opposing
groups, as well. So early as the ninth century Jewish
merchants are known to have brought from the east vari-
ous products, such as spices, drugs and slaves, and to
have returned to eastern countries with the products of
Europe.

Even then Jews settled, where they were permitted to
settle, and took up trades. There were glass-workers,
goldsmiths, silversmiths, locksmiths in many of the Medi-
terranean cities, and even scattered members of the race
in Northern Europe. But those familiar with that eastern
travel are known to have served as ambassadors between
Haroun-al-Raschid and European kings; Charlemagne,
among others, who then ruled over the Germans. Paper
must have passed in those embassies, but it does not appear
to have stirred curiosity among the Teutons more than
among the Jews, of whom, though Mr. Chamberlain makes
no mention of it, there were numbers in Germany, some of
them having lived there so early as 315 A. D.

Many of them were scholars from whom* distinguished
lines have sprung. The Fratelli Treves, whose Italian
books lie on the tables of the cultured of today the world
over, are descended from one of the most remarkable Jew-
ish families of whom there are records, and they are first
found in Germany in those early times. The Jews there

58 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

lived comfortably, prosperously, serving the king* as faith-
fully as did non-Jews. Some of them unquestionably trav-
elled East to Saadiah's school. In all probability there
were merchants among them. But when, about Charle-
magne's time the agitations began in Christian countries
which were to culminate in the Crusades against the Moors,
the Jews in Germany, because they, too, were "infidels" and
looked not unlike the Moors, came in for much hatred.
False accusations, persecutions and wholesale massacres
thinned their ranks. Their homes destroyed, their goods
seized, and life become so very uncertain with them, many
of them fled to such sanctuary as they might find, in
other lands.

As the first and second Cru*sades cover a century's
history, and their aftermath a still longer period, and as
the Crusaders were to be met with on every highroad in
Europe, the Jews must have had a pretty hard time of it
in the keeping of body and soul together. It is small
wonder that the minds of non- Jewish inventors of that
period ran to the needs of war rather than to the evolving
of the mysterious fabric we call paper. It is no wonder
at all that the minds of Jews, pursued by the persecuting
zeal of the Crusaders ; obliged to exercise their wits night
and day to secure their own and their families' safety,
were content to leave matters as they were, for the time
being, at any rate. Bigotry augmented with the war ; and
the zealous devised some very strange ways of inciting
the people against those who did not believe in the pre-
vailing religion. It was during the Crusades that the
story of "The Wandering Jew" was invented to fill the
superstitious with the belief that the Jew was accursed
reprehensible in God's sight, and should be, therefore, in
the sight of good churchmen.

THE JEW IN INDUSTRY 59

"However," continues Mr. Chamberlain, avoiding the
truth "avoiding" because it is impossible to believe him
unaware of it "for nearly five hundred years the Semites
and half-Semites held the monopoly of paper; time enough,
if they had possessed a spark of invention or experienced
the slightest longing for intellectual study, [Oh, oh ! And
this at a time when all Christendom was warring and the
Jews were practically the only unattached people who
might and did concern themselves with things intellectual !]
to have developed this glorious weapon of the intellect into
a power; and what did they do with it? Nothing, abso-
lutely nothing. All they could do was to make promissory
notes of it, and, in addition, a few hundred soul-destroy-
ing books."

Among those books were Maimonides' philosophic
work, the "Guide for the Perplexed" which Grotius drew
from and which has affected human thought for centuries ;
the laboriously copied Scriptures, and numerous early geo-
graphical, astronomical and mathematical works, original
and translated from the Arabian. These were made by
Jewish scribes, often by flickering torch-light, who copied
over and over again these works for the scholars and cler-
ics of those centuries. But, continues Mr. Chamberlain,
"in the course of the Crusades, the secret of the manufac-
ture of paper, guarded with such intellectual poverty, was
revealed. What the poor Iranian, wedged in between the
Semites, Tartars, and Chinese had in^etited, was taken over
by the Jree Teuton." '(TKe italics are !Ee present author's.)

It took the free Teutons quite a century thereafter
to come to the building of a paper mill, and two hundred
more years before they made the discovery of block print-
ing. Again fifty more passed ere movable type was per-
fected, and Gutenberg printed his Bible, or Jewish Scrip-
tures. But during all this time Europe continued to be

60 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

torn with wars. In the chaos Jeanne d'Arc had run her
career and had perished at Rouen, and kingly lines had
risen and fallen. During these troubled times the Euro-
pean Jews sustained themselves as best they could. Most
of the occupations in which they engaged must have been
followed by stealth, since the laws of many lands pro-
hibited them from practicing the majority of trades and
callings then known. There is evidence that Jewish gold-
smiths, silversmiths, locksmiths existed. Some of these
must have been searching for a means of printing, for laws
were enacted to prohibit them from practicing the cutting
of seals, a trade which was the direct predecessor of type-
cutting, and one in which the Jews must have operated,
else why the laws to prohibit them?

When, in 1450, steel movable type was an assured fact
Coster had worked with wooden type some thirty years
earlier the Jews were among the first to invest their
money, time and intelligence in perfecting it. Within
twenty-five years after Gutenberg's discovery, the Soncini,
descendants" of German Jews who had fled to Italy from the
persecutions of earlier times, were making Italy famous for
its fine printing, and their race joyful with new hope. "Out
of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord
from Soncino," became a famous saying. The Soncini
printed the Hebrew Bible as well as Italian works, using
a fine type cut by the expert type-cutter whose letterings
distinguish the choice volumes issued by Aldus from his
Aldine press.

In England, France, Holland and Spain the clicking of
type was heard simultaneously. It was the advance guard
of the great work-multiplying machinery which has since
changed the economy of the world. The facts of that epoch
suggest that the Jew, as a stupid, was in rather good com-
pany; but it cannot be said that this was on equal terms;

THE JEW IN INDUSTRY 61

for, as has been stated in several countries, and notably
in Germany and Austria, he was specifically prohibited
by law from engaging in seal-cutting.

By 1500, Gerson Soncino, who came to be dubbed "The
Wandering Jew of Italy/' had planted Italy with printing
shops and his race permanently before the world in mod-
ern industry. Mantua, Naples, Brescia, Rome all had
their Soncino printing establishments. Twenty years later
Gerson Cohen, a member of the same family, returned to
Germany and set up a press at Prague. From him a great
family of printers derived who, for generations, were
known as the Gersonides,

It should be said here that type-making, type-setting
and printing for which, from the first, the Jews showed
a marked aptitude, was hailed by them as "the art of writ-
ing with many pens." The early printers looked upon
theirs as "holy work/' "Certainly/ 5 wrote Jansen, "print-
ing gave wings to intellectual life/' "Gave wings to our in-
tellect! 5 ' exclaims the irascible Mr. Chamberlain, quoting
inexactly, as he so often thinks, "On the contrary, it was
winged intellect that forced the invention of printing!"
Mr. Wells in his "Outline of History" says of that won-
derful discovery that it not only set ideas trickling, but
running in floods. Probably nothing greater has ever
happened to humanity, than this invention of printing. It
has set undreamed-of forces in motion in the world.

It is not short of romance to trace the upward rise of
the Jewish printer from those early beginnings to the pres-
ent day, when the various occupations opened up through
this invention give employment to multitudes of Jewish
craftsmen the world over. Today the Type-setters' Union,
said to be the strongest in the Federation of Labor, is com-
posed largely of Jews. The same might be said of the
unions of tailors and clothing makers and many other

62 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

numerically strong labor groups, which in themselves
should be sufficient to disprove the statement so often heard,
that Jews are not willing workers with their hands. Avail-
able statistics prove that as artisan in many crafts the Jew
occupies an important position in the industrial world,
though he has had to battle for the respect he now enjoys.

In the last forty years he has risen steadily as a factor
in United States industry, and in it has proven to be a
living denial of the charge that the Jews are, primarily,
a money-seeking and ease-loving race. The industry the
poor among them display is passing into a proverb; and
the poor and industrial classes among the Jews represent
seventy-five per cent of all Jews, go where you will, but
these, due to their self-respect, are less discernible among
the general population than are the poor of any other
of the numerous races that make up the population of
the New World.

Some reasons for this will develop as we proceed in
our story; but the basic reason of all is the Jew's determi-
nation to be independent, at no matter what cost in self-
denial or labor. He is intelligently seeking a way out of
poverty. He labors long and hard, and often in despised
trades ; but, meaning to better himself by and by, he studies
as he works. And, as m&ny have observed, he puts ideals
into his work. He may not express his ideals in our terms.
He may even express them in a way to us unlovely. He
will be sure to do this if he belongs to the ill-fed class. The
ill-fed of all races fight strenuously because they are and
know themselves to be at a disadvantage. Mr, Belloc,
observing certain forms of struggle in the Jewish race,
says, fastidiously, as another reason wfiy the Jew should
Ke go? rid o? : He is not like us. He does not reason like
us. His manners are not like ours.

But the battle with want, with hardship of any sort, in-

THE JEW IN INDUSTRY 63

evitably leaves its scars, and in nothing more than in man-
ners. Dr. Johnson, whose boyhood was spent in penury,
could never shed a certain unpleasant awareness of the
need for economy. If a philosopher of his stern type was
custombound by a mere lifetime habit, how shall we de-
mand of the Jews the immediate shaking off of the race
habit of self-defense, of distrust of the world which has
been forced upon them for millenia? Yet the industrial
Jew, in particular, goes courageously on, perhaps even a
bit desperately, since he knows that if he does not care
for himself, none else will care for him. One of the first
things he does is to educate his children so that their
future may be an improvement over the life he has known.
What is altogether amazing in the Jews of the working-
classes, is that after long days at work-benches, fathers
and mothers themselves seek mental improvement through
evening public school classes, and by attendance at the
public lectures which in New York, at least, are now part
of the educational system of the city. They sacrifice leisure,
and, it may be needed rest, to hear of science, literature,
music, travels. The corridors and reading rooms of pub-
lic libraries show the Jews to be omnivorous readers and
students.

A confirmed anti-Semite will, of course, discount all
this as an indication of Jewish worth. He will probably
tell you it is mere sentiment to recall it; that the Jew
"pushes" out of mere dogged will ; that it is part of the Jew-
ish scheme to conquer the world. The prejudiced today do
not hesitate, in discussing the Jew, to transmute what are
virtues in others, into vices when displayed by him. A
most unpleasant example af this has been furnished by an
editor of the ^World's Work" Fitfiin the year.

"The Jew, 55 Ke writes, '"scrapes together a few hun-
dred dollars at Els' sewing machine or pressing boardj

54 THE JEW AJND C1VIJL1ZAT10N

with this he purchases an equity in a tenement house, giv-
ing first, second, third, fourth, and fifth mortgages for
the remainder. He then moves his family into the least
desirable apartment; he himself becomes the janitor; his
wife does not disdain the job of scrub-woman; his sons do
service as painters, paper hangers, and general repairmen.
In this way his "overhead" is very light; everything is
very light; everything is kept within the family, which
labors eighteen hours a day with one consuming determi-
nation to get together enough money to pay off the series
of mortgages as they fall due. The family can subsist on
the modicum of food and can wear the cheapest clothes;
it spends no money on amusement or general frivolity; it
has but one purpose in view to meet those payments!"

Could a picture be painted that represented better cit-
izenship than this of a family, coming to the land of the
free, hoping to become more than grovellers, and willing,
meantime, to endure incomparable hardships to attain it;
avoiding the foolish, dishonest running into debt, and win-
ning by sheer labor, by long personal self-sacrifice? This
is the moral stuff of whicfi a fine nation is made. It is
the stuff of the Pilgrim FatEers, of the true pioneers; but
their path Was easier, since there were none to cry "shame"
upon their heroism. Far from sneering at them, we, in
free America, should encourage people wlio have such
fortitude, and rectitude to contribute to tHe national char-
acter. These are the true qualities that may stay the de-
cay of over rich cpuntries. Out of many of the Russian
homes thus established in the eighties and nineties have
come scientists and professional men; teachers and preach-
ers, who today hold notable positions.

This same writer describes some of these strangers
who come to America seeking asylum. It was rather
"disconcerting, 55 he says, "to see their half-starved ap-

THE JEW IN INDUSTRY 65

pearance, their furtive movements, their hollow chests,
their undeveloped bodies, the outward physical signs of the
centuries of city dwelling that had been their portion/*
He perceives nothing of the wonderful in the miracle of
these men courageously going to work and starting life
anew in a foreign land, among not friendly glances, sup-
ported only by their marvellous faith. On the contrary,
through the insistently prejudiced mind the virtues of
these people are transformed into vices; every timid
glance of enquiry is interpreted as a sign of cupidity; every
necessary frugality as an indication of mercenary traits.

These immigrants take up dress and clothing and boot-
making, and are accused of seeking only the "softer berths"
in industry. They have been especially attacked for "tak-
ing possession" of the clothing manufactory of the coun-
try. One would think they had ousted some other group
who wished to retain control over it. This is not true.
They have taken what no one else particularly wanted.
The Jews of Eastern Europe, especially from Russia, which
group, as has been seen, has been picked out for some es-
pecially harsh treatment, have come into the country like
so many confiding sheep into the American fold, not to
beg or to borrow, or to steal, but to work and emanci-
pate themselves from want They come, as a rule,
skilled in some branch of industry. Seventy-five per cent
of Jewish handworkers have been listed as "skilled work-
ers." They look for an opening in the avocation they have
followed abroad. That is frequently the making of cloth-
ing.

Much might be said of this trade, and the manner by
which the Jews have been inducted into it. In the first
place, it is one of the avocations into which, centuries ago,
they were forced; in the second, it is associated with much
in the past which has caused the majority of non- Jewish

66 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

men, at least, to turn from it. Part of the tyranny of the
past practiced toward the Jews has consisted in making
them ridiculous. Rulers are recorded who have passed
laws prohibiting Jews from riding on horseback and
obliging them to ride upon donkeys. One king, as all know,
chose what he regarded as an amusing way of forcing
more money than was his due from a Jewish subject by
drawing his teeth, one by one, until he consented to "pay
up/'

It may be noted in passing that this sportiveness later
took the form of forcing absurd and insulting names upon
the Jews, which jest continued to be indulged in until a
comparatively recent period. It originated, no doubt, in
the discovery that the old Jewish name forays began to
be obstructive, since they carried with them what was
practically a geneological tracing of ancestry, as: Ben-
jamin-ha-Levi-ben Moses, and so on, meaning Benjamin
son of Levi, son of Moses, etc. The Jews were ordered
to change their names and to choose new ones from a
list prepared and selected for them. The numerous 'heims
and 'steins, 'bergs and Vassers which figure among pres-
ent Jewish names are but the brands put upon them by
sportive non- Jewish rulers of scarcely one hundred and
fifty years ago.

Where Jews resisted this parting from their names
so long identified with their race and history, choice was
denied them, and such' namies as pleased the jocular in
authority over them, were forced upon them. Some of the
race who have since tried to rid themselves of isuch tin-
beautiful names Have been Heaped witK abuse. TKougli
as shopkeepers and worfoien these names have Keen most
serious "drawback's to them, they are branded at once as
would-be imposters wHen tfiey seeK even legal authority
for changing tfiem. Nor will it b"e amiss to give Here a

THE JEW IN INDUSTRY 67

few of the least offensive names imposed upon the Jews
by the royal wits of Austria in the eighteenth century,
The German name is given and its kindest equivalent in
English, as an illustration o why, even in translations,
many old world names are unbearable to Jews, and why
those who wear them so unwillingly should be relieved
from the burden and indignity of them:

Drachenblut, dragon or serpent blood; Nachtkafer,
blackbeetle; Rindskopf, wooden or blockhead; Veilchenduft
(the mildest interpretation), odoriferous; 'Bettelarm, old
pauper; Eselkopf, ass's head; Singmirwas, sing-me-some
thing; Katzzenellenbogan, cat's joints or elbow; Wohlge-
ruch, stinker; Wansenknicker, bedbug-squeezer; Sauma-
gen, hog or pig-belly; Nashorn, hooknose; Gottlos, God-
less ; etc., etc. Anti-Semites have made much of the Jewish
tendency to change names, and where mere vanity, shame
of race or desire to perpetrate a fraud animates, no possible
excuse can be made for the practice ; but a little examina-
tion into this topic on several sides would go far to lessen
the suspicion which is expressed often against a people
who, in America are eager, less to deceive, than to throw
far from them, all remembrance of past humiliations.

Returning to the charge that the Jews have "taken
over" the industry of clothing making: were any
others by, who wanted to take it over and develop it?
We have no evidence that there were., People manu-
factured clothing here, we are told, in 1850, before
the Eastern Jews came, but it was not of a kind to
raise the general standard of dressing here, or to increase
our industrial standing or output. It in no way approached
the standard of product offered by Vienna, Paris, or Lon-
don, Hence great fortunes were spent in those centres by
fashionable Americans. American men were not interested
in making; women's clothing; as Jewish men today are do-

68 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

ing* In fact, the facetious aphorism "it takes nine tailors
to make a man/' though many centuries old, never lost its
power over the imagination of the average man of Anglo-
Saxon race. The tailor was in the beginning and ever has
been a source of ridicule among the comic writers notwith-
standing his usefulness. In an often quoted line of
Percy's "Reliques" the "tailor lown" is referred to with
good natured contempt. This ridicule had no reference
to the Jews, who at that time were not in England ; nor was
such reproach as was attached to the calling brought upon
the trade by reason of the Jews' association with it. Quite
contrariwise, it was because of its supposed absurdity that
it was one of the avenues left open that the Jews might
enter, when other trades and occupations were closed
to them.

Nearly fifty per cent of the Jews in the Pale of the
Settlement in Russia earned their living in the manu-
facture of clothing. Cap-making, shoe-making, paper-
making, box-making, certain departments of chemistry and
agriculture, and other scattered trades engaged the re-
mainder. It was and is the most natural thing in the
world for them upon arriving in America, since the ma-
jority have brought their trade knowledge with them (this
notwithstanding much that has been written to prove the
contrary) to seek work in the lines with which they were
familiar. The transference of these clothing-makers from
European clothing centres is responsible, without question,
for the fact that today New York has taken its place with
Paris as a fashion centre, and that the standard of Ameri-
can dressing has risen immeasurably beyond what it was
even thirty years ago.

The influx of these workers has had a most diversi-
fied economic value for the country. It has diminished
our dependence upon foreign countries, shorn us of some

THE JEW IN INDUSTRY 69

of our provinciality and broadened our world acquaint-
ance and real interests. It has stimulated American silk
and cotton industries, to name two of the most familiar
articles, such as the manufacture of dress and hat trim-
mings now largely produced here, and opened up new in-
dustries which previous to the Jews' coming were never
thought of. The circle of remunerative employment
whether for men or for women, has widened to take in
thousands where once it engaged ten, and this expanding
process is still going on.

The air has never been so full of the spirit of prog-
ress. It is the comment of travellers that shopping streets,
even in small towns, are smarter than they used to be;
their shop windows better dressed. Finally, in the case of
the clothing makers, their coming has raised what was
a fourth or fifth class industry and certainly a despised
avenue of livelihood-earning into a great national industry
>of ,the first consideration and the calling itself into one
that excites envy; else why this loud outcry against the
Jew in it?

And in this, too, we see a notable characteristic of the
Jew. Forced in the past to take the world's leavings and
make what he could of them, he has at once set about
the creation of a virtue out of his hard necessity. In addi-
tion to being accused of having "taken over" the clothing
trade though today Italian, Rumanian and Serbian work-
ers in this trade are almost as numerous as the Jews he
is further accused of having taken similar control of the
tobacco trade, which has been a traditional occupation of
the Levantine people for centuries.

One of the few worthwhile things which Ernest Renan
has said of the Jews is this: ' "Examine at close range the
enemies of Judaism, and, in general, you will find that they
are enemies of the modern spirit 11 ' 1 The modern spirit: that

70 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

is what is conspicuous in the Jews of today. The old
Jewish tree is sprouting new leaves of hope and unparalleled
energy. The young Jews, those in industry, are pro-
gressive. Some one said of them a decade or more ago :
'The immigrant of yesterday is tomorrow's millionaire;
the poor sweater of ten years ago is today a manufacturer
and the tremendous energy of this people is becoming
a factor in the industrial life of the United States. If so
much can be accomplished in twenty years what must be
the result in a century? What will the national spirit of
which they have become a part, achieve? Trained in the
schools of the country, their souls freed from the anguish
of centuries of persecution, moving with perfect political
freedom is it not a natural thought that as the years go on
the Jews will render illustrious service as Americans? 5 '

Though reference is here made to such chief occupa-
tions as printing, clothing-making, tobacco-working, Jew-
ish industry is by no means confined to these. It extends
into every other field of human activity in which effective
work can be done under conditions that yield considerate
treatment free from suspicion and distrust, and a moderate
living. Given a chance that calls for his best qualities, the
Jew exemplifies every ideal that has been evolved concern-
ing thrift, economy, perseverance toward a goal

Again it may be necessary to interject that the Jew
as understood here is the Jew who represents at least ninety
per cent of his race, and not the "awful examples" which
the hostile seize upon in order to point their immoral tales.
The type of citizen which this ninety per cent of the Jewish
race represents, has, even at the very bottom of the ladder
of life, that combination which President Coolidge so re-
cently has described as "deep faith in spiritual things, tem-
pered by a hard common sense adapted to the needs of
the world."

THE JEW IN INDUSTRY 71

Nor should the topic of the Jew in industry be closed
without pointing attention to the fact that some of the
loudest voices that cry to us warnings against the "J ewish
Peril/' are not natives of the United States, but of other
lands. They have gained their own American followers
who have rushed into hatred by the impulse of their falsely
excited emotions. They have sought violently to create a
Jewish peril idea, which must vanish before an honest ex-
amination into it. A Jew here and there, of whom none is
more ashamed than his own people, has been the brand
with which to scar a whole race. But this is as unjust as
was Balzac's attacks upon the French peasants, the lowly
of his own people whom he charged (in Les Pay sans) with
being, with scarcely an exception, liars, petty thieves, sly,
models of cupidity and dishonesty, and, withal, religious
hypocrites.

The facts in the case disprove the statement so often
made that the better Jews connive at hiding and upholding
the misdeeds of the frail ones of their people. As one
of the most notable writers of their race, the late Joseph
Jacobs, has written: "Mr. Abramsky, or Mr. Isaacstein,
'or let us even say Mr. Jacobs, has no diploma entitling him
to do inefficient work or a piece of underhand trickery be-
cause he may be a descendant of Samuel or Hosea. In
fact . > .. the possession of so illustrious a pedigree only
creates the greater disappointment if its possessors fall
short of the standards of manners or morals in the ordi-
nary citizen/'

But there will be other occasions to touch upon this
side of the Jewish citizen as we follow him through the
developing field of economics, into commerce, domestic
and foreign, and, necessarily, trace his career as barterer,
merchant, and organizer.

CHAPTER IV
The Jew in Commerce

"Wherever we read human history, the answer is
always the same; where commerce has flourished,
there civilisation has increased. It is only when the
exchange of products begins that development follows.
This was the case in ancient Babylon, whose records
of trade we are just beginning to read. Today it is
not the battle-fleet, but the mercantile-marine, which,
in the end f will determine the destiny of nations/'

CALVIN COOLIDGE.
(Before the Brockton Chamber of Commerce)

WHEN the Jews began to affect commerce, giving it,
ultimately, its present international character; when
the clearer-minded of them began to figure it out, as Jews
have a way of doing, and of systematizing it, it was a
mean, if useful career, and spelled with a small c. It was
a work which rich men engaged in, but behind the screen
of an agent. Today, as all know, it has ceased to be a
lowly interest and has become the great one of every gov-
ernment in the world. Chambers to direct Commerce rise
in every community and in every land, and those who once
scorned an active participation in it, now crowd to enter it.
Economics has become a science.

Mr. Wells has deduced from numerous sources that
the Semites, to whom, Mr. Chamberlain says, the Jews are
half-brothers, early displayed the peculiar "gifts of the
Semitic peoples to mankind" of trade and of exchange;
and he points out, further, that "the moral teachings of
the Hebrews was saturated with the ideas of equivalents
and reparation". "With what measure ye mete, the same
shall be meted unto you," he quotes, and adds : "Other
races and peoples have imagined diverse and fitful gods,
but it was the trading Semites who first began to think of

72

THE JEW IN COMMERCE

God as a Righteous Dealer, whose promises were kept,
who failed not the humblest creditor, and called to account
every spurious act/' Apropos of which, according to
Jewish laws, a discrepancy of one-sixth in weight or
measure enabled the wronged party to secure the cancella-
tion of the sale'or purchase. Overcharging by the mer-
chant selling to the customer was the most frequent
instance in which the law was invoked; but the deceived
customer could recover from the merchant, the condition
being that the claim must be made as soon as the person
defrauded had had an opportunity to show his purchase
to a witness.

However, notwithstanding these laws, the Jew, of all
Semitic peoples, appears to have been the last to enter into
monetary transactions. He appears to have had nothing
to do, directly, at any rate, with money until a century or
so before the present era, and little to do with barter save
the simplest The Romans, Greeks, and Phoenicians were
all centuries ahead of him in this field though there seems
to be no dispute of the often declared fact that the Semites
were the first people to arrive at a form of civilization.
Archaeologists today generally agree that they precede the
Aryans.

Mr. Chamberlain, whose attacks upon the Jew are the
most remarkable and violent that have been made in cen-
turies, naturally denies them this rank and every quality
which even the unfriendly, heretofore, have conceded to
them. And he goes still farther; for he denounces their
"selfishness" as that of a "one-God people", who, though,
"beggarly poor in religion" have yet been able to dethrone
the many gods of Greece and of the Indo-Aryans. He
proclaims his passionate longing for the return to those
ancient "artistic" beliefs. With outlived paganism, of
course, we have nothing to do; but this author has under-
taken, and stuck to his task with a pertinacity a Jew might

74 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

envy, to prove that in everything appertaining to acquisi-
tion, barter, or sale, the Jew is inherently crafty, and by
inference, dishonest; and that, indeed, in every phase of
past and present life, he has exhibited only the mercenary

motive.

Of course the man who believes that because a few
artists existed in early Greece, all the race must have been
artistic, and still are so Edmond About has written some
very amusing descriptions of the modern Greek, which
might prove beneficial reading for this author of course
the man who believes that all Romans were great, because
a few were so, and that because a few Jews, or, as he inter-
mittently calls them, Semites, have been cunning, and have
grasped at great possessions, that selfish calculation and
mercenary motives are bred in the bone of every member
of the Jewish race, can hardly be taken seriously.

Unfortunately, his arguments have been caught up
deliriously by a pack which appears to have scattered over
the world to terrify it with their own cries of transmitted
hate and warning especially against the Jew "in business".
This means a very large percentage of Jews, since, for
thousands of years, circumstances have forced them into
trade, and even today, by a kind of race habit, by the fact
that prejudice bars their way, too, in many professions;
and, particularly, because they realize that all other careers
are assisted by the possession of a competence, many more
Jews, according to their numbers, enter commercial life
than non-Jews. It would seem to be time well spent, before
surveying the Jew and his connection witK commerce, to
look over specific attacks made by Mn Chamberlain, and
to examine the nature of the warrant He offers for making
them. By this means we shall tHe sooner arrive at a fairer
valuation of them, and of his reasoning generally.

His first proposition Is tfiat tEe Jewisfi race is a mon-
grel and not a pure stock, which preserves its purity by

THE JEW IN COMMERCE 75

inbreeding! He says it has held its strain unadulterated
and its primitive shortcomings intact for thousands of
years through a course of elimination of foreign blood.
Prior to the beginning of this elimination process, how-
ever, that is, some eight or ten or fifty thousand years ago,
Jews intermingled freely with other races of the ancient
world, from which Mr. Chamberlain deduces, and there-
from has been able further to deduce an amazing number
of mean, cowardly, and unlovely qualities with which to
invest the Jew of the present day.

He has gone at this work with a vim. He explains
throughout his book that he has "vigorously attacked
whatever is un~Teutonic". The Jews are so, he says; but
if his elaborately argued pages be read cautiously by one
fairly disposed to arrive at a better understanding, the
objectionable traits which he identifies as "Jewish" will be
found to be characteristics quite common to the human
family; very natural ones, whether the family be new Eng-
lish, old English, South American, Italian, French, yes,
even Teutonic. Nevertheless, this author proceeds to prove
them to be exclusively Jewish race inheritances, by
instances drawn ostensibly from the Scriptures and begin-
ning with the charmingly human anecdote of Rebekah.
The story will scarcely be recognized in the form in which
Mr. Chamberlain presents it. It would be interesting to
know whether he has drawn it from any known version of
the Writings, or from his own Teutonic deductions. These,
as Matthew Arnold pointed out fifty years ago often go

"spky/'

By the Oxford authorities Rebekah is placed at about
1857 B. C. or, about 3780 years ago. The Biblical story
paints her in a masterly bit of character delineation, as a
mother. It shows that in that matriarch were all the pro-
verbial "mother-in-law 7 ' likes and dislikes, and also the
partial fondness a modern mother may possess for her

76 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

youngest-born. You will find It paralleled today among
any nation you may select. A very amusing illustration of
a similar situation was portrayed a few years since in
Robinson's "Whiteheaded Boy", the Irish name for the
youngest son who is also the spoiled child of the family.

The account of Rebekah's partiality for Jacob will be
found in Genesis, chapter 27. There you will come upon a
picture of Rebekah "fussing", critical, and resentful of her
elder son's wives. They were not like the girls she used to
know when she was young. They were Hittites, and
strange to hen As a natural consequence, she resented
Esau, who had brought them into the family, and doted
on Jacob, who was still left to hen Presently you find her
conniving to secure for him the blessing of Isaac, which
should have gone to Esau. She accomplishes her purpose
and deceives her nearly blind husband* Of course, as soon
as Esau finds out the injustice, he is angry over it. His
wrath, very naturally, is to be feared. Rut Rebckah's
mother-heart knows his nature. She gives him credit for
being very tractable and forgiving, once he has cooled off.
So she urges Jacob to keep out of his way; to go away for
awhile until this has taken place. She wishes he would get
a wife and settle down; but, and here the mother-in-law
spirit shows again :

"I am weary of my life of the daughters of Heth/* she
tells her husband, as they talk the matter over* "If Jacob
marries one of them, what's the good of my living"!
Thereupon Isaac, quite like a husband of today, and to
put a stop to her worrying, sets about comforting her.
He advises Jacob to pay a visit to the land of his fore-
fathers and get a wife from there.

It is a homely story, but human, and wholly without
the mercenary motive which, for example, we may find in
Tennyson's "Northern Farmer", who assuredly was not
Jewish. It will be remembered how he impressed upon his

THE JEW IN COMMERCE 77

son continually the value of "Proputty ! proputty, proputty !
Now, don't J ee marry for money," said he, "but go w'ere
money is." A dozen similar pictures may be found, com-
monly at hand in the literature of all lands, to prove the
universality of parental ambition and cupidity. This, how-
ever, neither Rebekah nor Isaac displayed in so far as any
proof remains. Their chief concern was to see their son
escape his brother's wrath, and have him married to a nice
old-fashioned girl, the opposite of those forward daughters
of Heth.

But what does Mr. Chamberlain, who has set out to
prove a point, say of this simple tale? He writes:

". . the younger son, Jacob, is sent to Mesopo-
tamia, that he may take a Hebrew woman for wife, and
from this we must conclude that there was none in Pales-
tine, no Hebrew girl, at least who would, or regards wealth
have been a suitable match for him" ! Nor do Mr. Cham-
berlain's "instances" and liberties with the Scriptures stop
here- A few pages farther on he comes to Judah, one of
Jacob's twelve sons, who, in his day was an out-and-out
scalawag; but, it is from just this one of the twelve-
branched house of Jacob one who, by the way, is another
human type of which so many perfectly drawn ones are to
be found in Genesis that our Jew-baiter has been able to
trace in the Jew of today, every possible undesirable
characteristic. Indeed, as he skips from century to cen-
tury, he catches up every example he can find of obliquity
in the story of Israel, and weaves it into the race structure
to add to the undesirable qualities which he says all Jews
now possess. He dwells much upon the "rich elders of the
race", and "the heartless matchmaker, Jacob."

His meaning is far from clear to most of us, who are
accustomed to think of Jacob, despite his early cunning, as
a patient and faithful lover with sufficient heart to labor
for fourteen years for the woman he loved*

78 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

However* Mr. Chamberlain is not to be deterred by
any mere generally accepted fact. He is a discoverer; a
modern writer with modern ideas in his head; and these
indulge, as Mr. Wells has said, in his "Outline of His-
tory", in lapses "into picturesque romances which are at
once the joy and the snare of historical writers." But I
am forgetting; Mr. Chamberlain is more than historian;
he is an ethnologist, in search of racial traits. Having, in
his devastating journey, arrived at David, from whom so
many proud lines of Jews are said to have descended, he
proves that all traditions we have held heretofore concern-
ing David are absolutely erroneous, and does so in this
wise:

David's grandmother was Ruth, the Moabitess. In
the country in which he lived there were many races,
among them Hittites and Amorites, and "probably", since
there is nothing to guide the historian in this respect,
David's mother may have been a Hittite or an Amorite.
She also may have been and probably was, an Israelite.
But Mr. Chamberlain bases his "probability" on questions,
which, it seems have engaged the attention of European
ethnologists, and which rest upon suppositions and prob-
abilities as to the color of David's hair.

Accounts of this disagree apparently. Someone, Her-
der, it appears, has said that it was fair. It has even been
described as auburn. Hence, there is a "probability" that
David's mother may have been an Amorite.

Now, the Amorites, Mr. Chamberlain identifies as
"our own kinsfolk"; for they were all tall and strong and
so terrible in their appearance of might as to strike fear
into the hearts of the Israelites who beheld them. To this
splendid people, "our kinsfolk", says our author, "belonged
the brave Goliath killed by the treacherously slung stone"
from the hands of little David! And David being full of
the despicable characteristics of the Jews made this

THE JEW IN COMMERCE 79

cowardly attack, notwithstanding that many o the Amor-
ites carried "gigantic spears and heavy mail of iron!"

Nor is it enough to show how "Jewish" cowardice
and treachery inherited through his Moabite grandmother,
and "possible" Amorite mother, is marked in David; but
our historian goes on to show that Solomon, being the son
of Bathsheba, who was "probably" a Hittite, was of a
still more composite race and really not as much of a Jew
as David was. Yet it is through these two ancestors that
many modern Jews (quite a nation being possible from
Solomon, as we all remember) have drawn their many
"evil" qualities.

But we must come back to the subject of commerce:

It cannot be ascertained that the Jews had anything
to do with trading until long after David's time, not,
indeed, until after their stay in Babylon. Undoubtedly,
while in that opulent country, they saw much of bartering
and of commercial transactions generally.

It is not unlikely that the Babylonians, holding the
Jews in captivity, taught them somewhat of their own
method of buying and selling; a sort of give-and-take of
opinion and custom must naturally have obtained between
them and their captives. It is not unlikely that a kind of
highroad commerce may have been carried on later be-
tween Babylon and Palestine. Not all the freed Jews
returned to Jerusalem, and those who did so may well
have trafficked later with their kindred whom they had left
behind.

We know that at that period there was great maritime
activity among both Romans and Greeks, and that vessels
were plying about the Mediterranean and the Bosphorous,
with cargoes to and from the sea-ports of those days* But
there is nothing to indicate that the Jews were interested
in or desirous of taking part in these activities. Their
neighbors, the Phoenicians, on the other hand, a vigorous

gO THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

sea-faring people, are described as having had a natural
genius for commerce; but their overland transaction^ by
no means began to reach the importance of their maritime
interests. Phoenicia has been called a sort of "clearing-
house" for the products of the Mediterranean and Syria;
but the Jews, an inland race, seem to have known little and
cared less for ships or ports in those early days, though
they took to both very naturally some centuries later.

Such insignificant external trade as they knew, which
is first to be noted as occurring under Solomon, was the
exporting of wheat and oil, and the importing of peacocks
and apes, designed, no doubt, as contributions to the "glory
of Solomon's court/' Palestine, which was the assured
home of the Jews, was notable for its olive-groves, oranges,
and grapes. Its wines were famous in the early world and
today as elsewhere noted the Rothschilds have set up
presses to encourage the Zionist emigrants to attempt the
revival of its ancient wine industry.

Such trading as the early Palestinians knew was car-
ried on chiefly through the "wanderer" or Sober, an itin-
erant merchant, to whom the housewives sold their wools
and perhaps their eggs and milk, getting in return the
wares he carried; the transaction . being almost identical
with that carried on sixty years ago or less in our own
New England, Southern and Middle West provincial
towns. Camels, instead of covered wagons, may have
borne the pedlar's wares, or even oxen or donkeys; but
a very pleasing and colorful picture may be conjured of
those primitive peoples and their modest tradings, while
chattering and questioning the pedlar concerning the hap-
penings in other lands.

The merchants who thus supplied the Jews in Pales-
tine were often Philistines or came from the land of
Canaan. In the course of time we hear of dress fabrics
and even jewels reaching the Jews through these traders.

THE JEW IN COMMERCE 81

Presently there is note of a street being set aside in Damas-
cus for the holding of Jewish bazaars; but of what was
brought to it and offered for sale we have no record.
When the contiguity of those little countries of the primi-
tive world is considered, the various nations noted among
the early peoples would seem to lie as near together as the
counties in the States of our country. Many of these
counties are of larger area than the greatest nations of
the early world could claim.

In considering these very practical points we find it
easier to realize the interchange of even weighty commodi-
ties between those early people. After their return from
Babylon, the Jews in Palestine are said to have remained
very poor, but changes were beginning by that time, which
ultimately were to prove very momentous to them. Travel
was increasing. By 400 B. C or thereabouts, Herodotus
was going about and writing his impressions of strange
people, that were to become immortal. By the 5th century,
too, Sophocles comes into view. Persia, Greece and Rome
were enjoying a remarkable commercial prosperity. The
Jews, as "The People of the Book/' seem to have been
occupied chiefly with their Scriptures, which were now
being brought together and compiled. They were con-
tent to live away from commercial turmoil. They had
been stirred by the preaching of Ezra and Nehemiah, and
appear to have been concentrating their entire attention
upon things religious. "The less business, the more
Torah", was the answer made to those who criticised their
indifference to commerce.

Nevertheless traders passed to and fro through their
country, Tyrian silk traders, notably, and those who car-
ried luxuries from other countries to pique the Jewish
curiosity and desire. Undoubtedly they carried tales as
well as silk with them, and it is not long before we find
Jews here and there venturing out of Palestine to seek

82 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

acquaintance with the outer world with its foreign learn-
ing and luxury. But notwithstanding these exceptions,
their progress, as a race, toward commercial life was slow.
Josephus, who was writing in Athens about the year 93,
said of his people: "we do not dwell in a land by the sea
and therefore do not indulge in commerce by sea or other-
wise/' Perhaps Josephus was not aware of it, but so
early as the year 43 of the present era and nearly thirty
years before the Destruction of the Temple, some of his
people had already made their way into Mauretania, then
a province of Rome. It is said that Rome welcomed the
Jews enthusiastically, desiring their aid in civilizing the
Mauretanians.

From the time of the Dispersion, 70 A. D., which
scattered the Jews over the known world, their experiences
make very colorful reading; if often sad and sometimes
tragic, yet generally it is courageous and inspiring. In
the 4th century we find them branching out as sailors,
some owning their own vessels and trading along the Bos-
phorus. Colonies of Palestinian Jews were shortly settled
in Greece, where scholars of the race had thronged for a
century or two. This is the point in this era where they
definitely "enter Western civilization." It seems as if in
those early days the expatriates were generally recognized
as an interesting people which had something to bring into
European civilization, flence, Rome in particular, invited
them.

A picturesque colony was soon engaged in raising
mulberry trees and silk worms in Greece, in which country
the Jews prospered until the 12th century, becoming
famous manufacturers of silk and of other fine fabrics.
It is said that the rich of Corinth and of Athens paid great
prices for the beautiful product of the Jewish looms. A
traveller of the early Middle Ages, observing a Jewish
community in Stamboul, or as we know it today, Constan-

THE JEW IN COMMERCE 83

tinople, has described the residences of the Jewish silk
manufacturers of the twelfth century as the richest in the
city, outdoing in splendor the palaces of the Viziers; and
they were notable for their beautiful gardens.

Jews had dwelt in Turkey from the time of Alexander
the Great, and to this country, and to Persia, too, the
persecuted Jews from Jerusalem .fled and prospered
greatly. We now find them returning to Babylon in num-
bers; and to the better-known Persian cities, which were
like a second home to them. There Jewish learning had
first begun to express itself in written form. There, now,
great Rabinnical schools were established. Quite in the
beginning of our present era they began to sustain them-
selves in such leading centers as Ispahan, Hamadan,
Kermanshaw, Shiraz, Teheran, Iran. Today all of these
cities are rug centers. Their products which beautify
many American homes, were early made known to the
western world through the enterprise of Jewish merchants
and traders. In all probability Jewish workmen engaged
in their manufacture. All through the Levant little com-
munities of Jews were to be found, energetically seeking a
way to maintain themselves against decidedly bitter odds.
iMany of them, being Hebrew and Aramaic scholars, sus-
tained life by teaching; but all, even the Rabbis, occupied
themselves necessarily, with some trade or commerce.

More numerously, however, the Jews turned to the
newer- world of Europe.

They were silk manufacturers and traders in Spain,
and those of Cordova were famous. There are legends
which connect them with Venice, during the war with
Hannibal; legends that describe the Jews as befriending
the Venetians by bringing supplies by small boats from
Egypt. These legends say that the Jews were able to steal
in under cover of night to the beleaguered people and that
Venetians thereafter always held them in affection. How-

84 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

ever, there is a long interim in which history makes no
mention of them in connection with that land.

Late in the 10th century, long after the Islamic
troubles had come up, there is mention of another sort of
the Jews in Venice; or, rather, of a protective measure
which the Senate passed, to prohibit "J ews and other
merchants" from coming into the town. By this time it
would seem that "Jew" and "merchant" were synonymous
terms, and this metamorphosis from bookmen to trades-
men appears to have been brought about coevally with the
rise of Islam, about the sixth century. From this time on, the
Jews, being linguists, were able to serve as interpreters
and even as ambassadors between the antagonistic forces
of Christianity in Europe and of Islam in the East Jews
have been traced as travelling in this capacity between
Byzantium and Prague so early as the seventh century.

Shortly thereafter they are mentioned as having
pushed up to the Baltic, with little stocks of wines and
condiments, which the Northern nations are said to have
bought in quantities, as relishes to go with their salt fish
diet These trips, threading primeval forests, crossing
mountains, subject to highway attacks and those even of
wild animals, equalled in their demand for courage, those
taken by our pioneers in the early settlement of our own
country.

In Venice, by 1100-1200, the Jews had a special
island, among the many that form the city. They were
again highly valued by the Venetians, who credited them
with having been instrumental in establishing the com-
merce between themselves and the Levant. This commerce
did so much to enrich that government, that the Senate
advised the minister to encourage the merchant Jews, and
to build store-houses for them, "for the sake of the im-
portant advantages which will accrue to our Customs'
Duties."

THE JEW IN COMMERCE 85

It is vastly interesting to trace the history of the
Jews' truly heroic commercial courage. So often they
were rebuffed in their bread-winning efforts ; so often they
were lean and underfed; yet to each rebuff of fate, they
have begun again, with indomitable courage and amazing
hope. They have shown a special gift for taking waste
and converting it into wealth ; for taking up despised call-
ings and making the envious desire them. They had
money-lending and money-changing thrust upon them, yet
when they made both profitable these, too, were taken out
of their hands.

With the influx of precious metals the Jews performed
prodigious commercial feats, making, as did all in Spain
and in Portugal in those days, great fortunes, only to
suffer in turn the losses of most of their gains. The law of
compensation has ever acted with them, however; and,
scattered as they are, with kinsmen all over the world,
they have been able to speed the commerce of every mod-
ern land which has given them asylum. It is noteworthy
that within the present century Spain has taken steps to
invite the race back to the land in which it once flourished
and the glory of which the Jews, very largely, helped to
bring about. It was President Castelar of the short-lived
Republic of Spain who pleaded: "Let there be no more
accursed races on earth . . . Let us be so just as to be
enabled to see even to what degree each race has con-
tributed to the universal education of humanity."

The Venetian Jews experienced frequent and hard
vicissitudes. Having raised the commerce of the country
to so high a point; the itinerent merchants of the race
having succeeded in getting control of the trade from
upper and lower Rumania; having fearlessly ventured in
every direction whence Venice might draw valuable trade,
you come upon local laws being enacted to keep them out,
"in order that the native merchants may be protected."

86 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

A century or two later Venice prohibited the Jews
from dealing in new things; in anything but money-lend-
ing. Practically they were ordered to take this up. They,
therefore, became lenders of money as best they could, on
any collateral they could get; wearing apparel, jewelry,
carriages, etc., which articles they had permission to sell
when unredeemed. This is the origin of money-lending,
which presently became known as pawn-broking, and of
the Jew's dealing in second hand things. In the matter of
money lending, the state fixed the tax or interest, which
was allowable, at first, at 4 per cent, with a rise to 12 per
cent., according to whether the loans were made on sub-
stantial security or on written obligations. All the roues
of Europe, turned to the Jews to get them money. They
would borrow on any terms. Usually they had no col-
lateral whatever to offer, and were therefore willing to pay
any "usury". Great tragedies lie along this path which
we may not risk recalling.

After the Inquisition, many of the Jews, who, in the
early centuries of our era resided in Spain and who were
identified there with manufacturers, together with non-
commercial groups of their race in Spain, went over to
Venice, which, with the other Italian States, was in the
full excitement of the new invention, printing. Here it
was that the ghetto was first established as a device which
would give the Jews an exclusive section in which they
might be free from the interference of non-Jews in the
following as they desired of their racial customs. While
in after years many other cities imitated the example of
Venice, with very unpleasant results for the Jews, yet
that first ghetto, that secured them quarters in which they
might be free to perform their religious rites and cere-
monies, was, as one writer of the race has put it, "a potent
factor in the spiritual life of the race."

THE JEW IN COMMERCE 87

The Jews of Europe were among the first to open
commerce with the western hemisphere, and upon arriving
here themselves, in the middle of the sixteenth century,
immediately began to suggest outlets for available goods.
We find among shipments arriving in the new land, sent
through their efforts, cargoes of knives, bells, scissors, and
pearls for the good wives of New Amsterdam. The Jews
met with hostility here, but less, it will be conceded, than
had been their share abroad; and there is a curious demon-
stration of their loyalty (previously referred to) to the
country of their adoption in the fact that when the British
took New York, the Jewish well-to-do group there moved
on to Newport and other cities.

There, in 1753 we find one of the many early builders
of American commerce, Aaron Lopez, of a Portuguese
Jewish family, with thirty ships engaged in trade with the
West Indies. A hundred others might be cited, even from
among these early Jewish citizens, who were forces in the
colony's development. Quoting from the ff Journal of Com-
merce and Commercial Bulletin" and speaking of the plas-
tic character of the Jew and his indomitable energy which
asserts itself under the least favorable conditions, we find:
'"While New York was still New Amsterdam the Jews were
among the chief exporters and importers of this city. When
Newport was a mart of trade, they ranked among its fore-
most merchants; they were trading on the Delaware in
1655, and in the eighteenth century, their names stood high
in the community of Philadelphia. With connections ex-
tending throughout the whole civilized world, and able to
command the facilities of credit and exchange in Europe,
the American Jew's breadth of view, his foresight and
his enterprise were powerful factors in securing for the
young Republic the place it early took in international

commerce."

88 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

It has been said that the Jew excels in the "commerce
of intangibles"; in other words, in just money; and this
leads us naturally into consideration of the Jew in bank-
ing; in what may be called "broad finance", ivhich we will
next proceed to take up.

CHAPTER V
The Jew in Finance and Banking

"The character of a people, like the character of a
person, should not be measiired by its worst, but rather
by its best; not by the depths into which it has at times
sunken and declined; and, reckoned by that rule and
by that standard, Israel's rank is high. For zvhat de-
partment is there of social or civil economy that has
not been and is not now illustrated and adorned by the
unimpaired vigor, the unslackened energy, the im-
mortal youth of this so ancient nation P

Right Reverend DAVID H. GREER.
(In address at Carnegie Hall, November, 1905)

WHEN we come to the Jew as banker and financier
we find ourselves crossing the boundaries of the
real and entering the field of the magical; a field all the
more astonishing because it offers such contrasts in facts,
personalities and motives to those of whom we have heard
such strange accounts through the writings of Messrs.
Belloc, Chamberlain and others, not omitting, of course,
those of Mr. Henry Ford. These all declare, and wave a
red flag of warning, that the Jews have designs upon the
wealth of the world. Mr. Ford, who is rated as being
worth personally, $500,000,000 has launched a four-
volume attack against the Jews of America, whose richest
member, Mr. Otto Kahn, and he is alone in his class, is
rated at $100,000,000. The late Mr. Jacob H. Schiff, also
alone in his class, which, however, includes a dozen or
more non-Jews, was rated at $75,000,000.

On the other hand fabulous fortunes have been earned
or inherited and are owned by the non- Jewish of America,
Mr. John D. Rockefeller being listed as worth
$2,500,000,000; while several others are rated at $500,-
000,000, $200,000,000, and $100,000,000. Most of these

89

90 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

fortunes have been made through enterprises with which
Jews are not connected. Is it strange that a thought
springs up, in facing these facts, that this anti-Semitic out-
cry against Jewish financiers may have for its purpose the
directing of the public attention less to the Jewish rich
than away from the super-rich among the non- Jewish?
In the meantime we may with interest trace the path of the
Jew from his earlier thraldom to lesser things to latter-
day finance.

There is nothing more picturesque in fiction; nothing
more stimulating; nothing more inspiring to the humble
than the story of the Jew in today's finance. From
itinerent pedlar to manufacturer; from manufacturer to
international commerce; and thence to banking, railroad
building, international finance this would seem to be the
regular progression in which the race has travelled ever
since the inquisitorial happenings in Spain and Portugal
sent it scattering through the world. The stone which
those builders discarded in that dark period has become of
the first importance in the building of the world's present
prosperity. Could we sweep with a telescope the travels
of the Jews in their nomadic wanderings of the centuries
and scan the wide earth as they pass on, to the east, to
the west, to the north, to the south, seeking peace and
sometimes finding it for a while, our eyes would rest upon
a panorama of great wonders unfolding in the wake of
that expulsion of a people.

Prior to that period of catastrophe, for persecutors as
well as for persecuted, banking, as we know it, was non-
existent. A bank, it is true, had been established at
Barcelona, early in the fifteenth century, which secured
monies and loaned them in a simple way for foreigners as
well as for the citizens of that locality- There are mei>
tioned, as well, banks at Florence, and at one or two other
Italian cities; but Jews do not appear to have had any

THE JEW IN FINANCE AND BANKING 91

connection with them. There had been deals in high
finance of amazing scope as we see them today against the
background of modern progress, and some of these had
been affected by Jews. In the majority of cases, these
involved the risk of great losses, which was the "deal"
that generally fell to the lot of the Jews. They were both
speculators and gamblers, using the word in its best sense.
But they had the courage to risk all, over and over again,
when there appeared a chance of their coming out with
even a little profit. There is evidence in plenty, however,
that in these transactions, they mingled ideals ; that'always,
the hope was cherished of raising their race, and even of
returning to their ancestral Palestine.

There had been, in Spain, in England, in Germany,
many individually rich Jews prior to the tenth century*
They had evolved many of the little principles which now
seem so natural in the handling of money. They had at
least introduced the Bill of Exchange into European
business transactions. Montesquieu credits them, and
Sombart has reiterated this, with having invented that
little instrument, which today is the backbone of com-
merce. Mr. Joseph Jacobs, however, who is a respected
authority, thinks his race has been over-estimated in this.
He thinks it more likely that having discovered the useful-
ness of the "bill" in his travels in the east, whence we
derive our decimal system, that the Jew merely applied it,
practically, in his European transactions. The carrying
about of money, in quantities, prior to the use of this bill,
had been full of risk, and all too often had led to thievery
and to murder.

As you read the stories of those early Jewish finan-
ciers, you are often struck by the dual aims that occupy
them. Their keen quest for money is linked, in almost
every case, with a great mournful love for their race.
They are subconsciously occupied with a dream of political

92 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

equity, of freedom, and of raising the race again to a
national stature. To attain that end no sacrifice, no risk
was too great to be run. It was this indefatigable pursuit
of a purpose which gave them their incomparable courage,
but which also often brought upon them the antagonism
that prejudice had kept smouldering most of the time.

Unpopular with the people in which this animosity
was steadily fostered, nevertheless, as financiers, as treas-
urers, they stood, often at the right hand of kings, enjoy-
ing privileges in return for their services in raising money
when monarchs needed it. Most of the enterprises under-
taken by the sovereigns of the tenth to the fifteenth cen-
turies were promoted by Jewish financiers. Mr. Wells
says that during that period, in western Europe, especially
in England and France, there sprang up, like flowers, a
multitude of very distinctive and beautiful buildings,
cathedrals, abbeys and the like, which lovely efflorescence
marks the appearance of a body of craftsmen closely
linked in its beginnings to the church. Associated with
this efflorescence, however, like the forgotten seed from
which the tree grows, the Jewish financier almost always
was to be found. To cite the case of Aaron of Lincoln :

It was he who raised and advanced the money for the
building of the famous Abbey of St. Albans, and the
Peterborough Cathedral; and for many others. Jewish
money went also to the support of Crusaders; to the fitting
out of those heroes. Henry II of England was Aaron's
debtor for what now would amount to many hundreds of
thousands of dollars. What kings do, their flatterers
imitate; and so, many of the smaller knights and barons
of England also borrowed of Aaron, pledging their estates
in exchange for his ready cash. Upward of four hun-
dred of them were indebted to him when he died, prac-
tically the larger part of England being thus pledged
to him.

THE JEW IN FINANCE AND BANKING 93

But here enters the curious if cruel comedy in which
so many kings have taken pleasure. The laws of Eng-
land and those of all European countries were alike in
this permitted the Jew to lend money, sometimes
obliging him to do so. They specifically allowed him to
charge amazing interest on it only that the crown itself
eventually might come in for the profits. It was a sort
of padrone system by which the Jewish genius did the
work and the king took the profits. In this way, when
Aaron of Lincoln died, great estates in all the best shires
and counties "fell to the crown".

A great deal of vicious fiction has been retailed con-
cerning the "Jewish usury" of those days, the larger part
of which, as in the case of late accusations, when brought
into the light, prove insubstantial Instance after in-
stance, however, may be met with of royal cupidity and
its ruthless over-reaching of even astute Jewish ministers.
Prescott gives a striking one in his mention of Samuel
Levy, who served Peter the Cruel as financier. When
that sovereign's exchequer was low, Samuel's accruings
temptingly large, and Samuel himself giving every indi-
cation of having a long life before him, the royal Peter
made away with him and took possession of his treasure,
which amounted to four hundred thousand ducats. If
Jewish wit has grown sharp, it is not to be wondered at,
since the Jews have had to whet them upon some pretty
hard circumstances. Levy's fortune amounted to four
hundred thousand ducats, but this was a mere bagatelle
as fortunes went in Spain and Portugal, where many
noblemen were in receipt of from forty to sixty thousand
ducats annually. These were the profligates who turned
to the Jew for loans when their spendings exceeded these
fabulous sums.

But new forces entered Western civilization with the
coming in of the fifteenth century. Finance was begin-

94 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

ning to move in a new and more regular if also more
complicated system. The Jewish money-lenders by this
time were bankers, even if they had not yet been called so.
They were no longer necessary to the Spanish Court, how-
ever, for non-Jewish competition had begun, in commerce
and in money lending; even the Church had its own
usurers. The first bank of deposit and exchange had
opened in Barcelona, in 1401, and the city was "booming".
In every European State, apparently, minds were busy
evolving banking schemes, for providing funds for the
building up of domestic and foreign commerce. Evidence
of change, enterprise, development meets the eye on almost
every page of the histories of that fifteenth century. The
scattered, yet cohering Jewish families of Europe un-
doubtedly even then conducted a kind of primitive chain
system of banking. Members of the Mendes family, for
example, at the time of the expulsion of the Jews from
Spain, or very shortly after, had a house in Antwerp,
though the principal home of the Mendes Bank was in
Lisbon.

We have said that the tracing of the Jew in finance
is like crossing the boundary from the real and entering
into the realm of magic. There is vivid romance to be
met with in it. The story of Joseph Nasi, for instance,
one of the first Jewish financiers of his period, is like turn-
ing the pages of "A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS".
Nasi was a member of the Mendes family which had long
been identified with matters financial in Spain and in Portu-
gal. They belonged to the "Maranos", or converted Jews,
who, in order to carry on their work, had outwardly pro-
fessed a faith to which they did not inwardly subscribe.
Francisco Mendes at the head of the house in Lisbon, and
Diogo, at the head of that in Antwerp, were regarded as
the richest of Portuguese Jews.

Like many of the converts de convenance of that

THE JEW IN FINANCE AND BANKING 95

period, their money, perhaps, securing them the priv-
ilege, they did not disguise their loyalty to their race,
though they had changed their religion. Several mem-
bers of the family are notable for the sums they contributed
for the purpose of softening the miseries of the poorer
Jews who had been driven from the peninsula. It was
Hector Mendes who, when the king enquired: "And what
are your riches ?" replied : "The alms I have given away/'
Francisco Mendes, who was the Mayer Rothschild of his
day, loaned vast sums of money to Charles V and other
kings.

But out of Portugal, shortly after the expulsion of
the Jews, came the youth, Joseph Mendes-Nasi, who was
"weary of feigning to be what he was not" He went to
Antwerp, joining his uncle, Diogo Mendes, and, shortly,
the two combining with another kinsman, formed a great
banking house or loan corporation. This was one of the
first of the family groups of which so many have since
filled the pages of European banking history, that of the
United States, and of the extreme East. Joseph, how-
ever, was not to remain in Antwerp, or even in Europe.
Stories reached him of the sufferings of the Jewish exiles
in Venice, and he set out to intercede for them. His jour-
ney was not without its stirring episodes, for it led
through a continent hostile, almost to a man, to Jews.
Unfortunately, he failed in his mission to alleviate the
trials of the Venetian Jews, and, his heart infused, as
Calderon has described it, with the deadly venom of mis-
anthropy with which the Inquisition had infected the
world, he shook the dust of Europe from his feet and
crossed into Turkey.

There, in a land which had always been friendly to
his people, he cast off his pretences and fearlessly returned
to the faith of his fathers. Thereafter his history reads
like none other of his time. It was a period in which

96 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

eventful things were continually happening; in which
tragedies were frequent; in which blessing and curses
were showered upon the human family. Elizabeth
reigned over England, and literature blossomed under her
hand; the astute and false Catherine dei Medici ruled
France. Political plotters set the European world in an
agitation. Nasi knew that world, and in Turkey was
soon in high favor with the Sultan Sulaiman, who loaded
him with honors and confided many of the interests of
his country to his care. He was an astute and wise finan-
cier, and so pleased the Sultan in the promotion of all
commerce, and by the wisdom of his counsel, that, first
made a guard of honor to the ruler, he is next made Duke
of Naxos, and presented with the city of Tiberias, in
Palestine, together with numerous outlying hamlets.
Though he did not attain these honors without exciting
the envy of many, yet his star continued in the ascendant.

With the help of the Pasha of Damascus, he now set
about the realization of a cherished dream, which was
nothing less than that which occupies the thought of the
Jewish world today, namely: to re-people Palestine with
Jews. He built a great wall about his city, and sent a
proclamation to Europe inviting the persecuted of his race
to return. To all who would work as farmers or artisans,
he offered homes, and free transport on his own ships.
While awaiting the coming of the immigrants, he set
about the planting of mulberry trees, and arranging for
the carrying on of other industries. What the outcome
was of this wonderful dream of an eastern financier, who
was all but king, is not clear. It is said that one ship-load
of immigrants, at least, was captured by pirates and sold
into slavery.

The Sultan Sulaiman and his successor Salim pre-
sented the Duke of Naxos with the island of that name
besides several others; and it would appear that he was

THE JEW IN FINANCE AND BANKING 97

not only financier for these rulers, but in charge of the
military interests of Turkey, besides conducting the corres-
pondence o State with the sovereigns of Europe. He
does not seem to have been beyond the reach of the
cupidity of some of these sovereigns, for he is said to have
loaned large sums to King August II of Poland, receiving
in return special commercial privileges, which, after all,
he was debarred from enjoying by the protests of the city
of Lemberg. Probably none of his race in modern times
ever enjoyed more complete power, or moved in a sphere
more important.

In Europe, the Jew's position had been clianging.
Commerce had passed practically out of his hands, and all
his efforts, necessarily were directed towards the making
of loans, and acting as general financial adviser. "Court
Jews/' as they were called, served every king and great
man on the continent, and were looked upon, so late as
1800, as indispensable in Germany. Apparently this pref-
erence for Jewish advisers roused the anger of the
envious, for sometimes it brought a grievous fate upon
very innocent persons.

Some time before the appearance of the Rothschilds,
who have so affected all banking and transformed it, a
great tragedy befell a Jewish financier, which, after events
proved, was nothing less than a judicial murder. Joseph
Suss Oppenheimer, a notable figure in the financial his-
tory of Germany, was the victim. He went through the
world almost like a meteor, rising from a very humble
beginning and small clerkship at Frankfort-on-the-Main,
through a series of widely differing occupations, until at
thirty-six he became the confidential man and financial
agent of Prince Karl, duke of Wiirtemburg. He lived in
the Duke's palace, and was officially known as the
"resident and privy factor/' whose duty it was to regulate
the finances of the dukedom.

98 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

Presently, in addition, he was placed in control of the
mint All he touched seemed to turn to profit for his
employer, but in the meantime, the desire to serve his own
people, and, perhaps, to have those about him upon whom
'he could thoroughly depend, was used to his disadvantage
by the people, whose prejudices against the Jews made
them not only intolerant of the power confided to Oppen-
heim, but more and more revengeful as it was clear the
Duke would hear nothing against him.

Several times in his short career, fearing for himself,
as he received from time to time evidence of the harsh
intentions of the Wiirtemburgers, Oppenheimer resigned
his office, but each time the duke persuaded him to recon-
sider. At last, however, his alarm became so deep that,
having balanced his accounts, he insisted upon withdraw-
ing. The duke urged him to wait over for a day, and to
spend that day with him at his neighboring castle, at
Stuttgart There, quite suddenly, and within a few hours,
the duke died.

Before morning dawned, every Jew in Stuttgart, in-
cluding Oppenheimer, was under arrest. Charges were
trumped up against him which, later, were proved to have
been baseless, and he was hurried to a gallows and hung
before thousands of fanatical people who came from every
direction to witness the killing of a Jew! A contem-
porary engraving of that deed, shows it to have been
brutal in the extreme! Oppenheimer had enjoyed, the
duke's favor for four short years, and paid this heavy
penalty for his faithful service at the age of forty.

It is said that the career of the Rothschilds contains
the key to all Jewish banking in the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries. While they were still unknown, however,
there were many notable Jewish bankers whose names
still meet the eye from time to time. Jacob Worms served
Louis XIV, as Court Jew; Solomon Medina played his

THE JEW IN FINANCE AND BANKING 99

part in financing the Duke of Marlborough's plans;
Eehrend Lehmann at the Saxony Court the Pintos,
Baron d'Aguilar a long list of men who rose high in
the centres in which they operated.

The great Jewish bankers who next come upon the
scene, appear to belong to a new and more enlightened
era than that which ended with the beginning of the
eighteenth century. They lived in an era of different op-
portunities ; and in an increasingly liberal age. They are
nearer to us and stand out as familiar figures. The
Rothschilds represent a class of Jewish bankers who have
"founded a family line" as no others of all who have
operated in finance have done. Some one has called it a
"close corporation," for, generation after generation,
since the time of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, son of
Amschef Moses Rothschild, they have married and inter-
married with the same exclusiveness as that which obtains
among the royal families of Europe. We may not do
more here than to trace the rise of this family, from
Amschel Moses Rothschild, born at Frankfort-on-the-
Main in the first half of the eighteenth century.

Frankfort-on-the-Main may one day be called the
cradle of world finance, since the great financiers who
have come from that city have been the bankers of the
world for now two hundred years. Amschel Moses
Rothschild was a "small merchant and money-changer,"
and it is said that his son, Mayer, who is generally
regarded as the founder of the fortunes of the house, often
counted change for him, studying the coins he handled,
and gaining thereby a variety of practical knowledge
which afterward served him in good stead. He, himself,
early became a financial agent for the Landgrave of
Hesse-Cassel, who was said to own the largest private
fortune in Europe. Mayer Rothschild was changing
English gold for the Crown Prince in 1794 in quantities

100 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

as large as 150,000, by which it will be seen that he
already had made a princely fortune.

By this time his sons were in association with him.
It is said that the branching out of this firm was due to
the rudeness received by Nathan Mayer Rothschild, at
the hands of a salesman, supposedly an Englishman. At
any rate, this son of Mayer Amschel Rothschild was soon
established in London, where he had become a British
subject, and thereafter we hear of his literally controlling
the bullion market. A banking house of Rothschild
Brothers was established next at Paris, and little by little,
enormous figures become associated with their name. It
is said that between 1814 and 1822, this house transferred
from England to -the continent, 18,000,000. A list of
their transactions between 1817 and 1848, in gulden,
francs and ducats, amounted to $654,848,200. On two
Austrian loans which the German branch of this house
negotiated in the first quarter of last century, the brothers'
profits were 6,000,000 gulden.

So the success of the house of Rothschild proceeds,
building not alone its fortunes but an enviable reputation,
even while an army of great competitors in the early part
of last century were especially strong. Their history is
linked with that of kings of succeeding reigns, with prac-
tically all the great railroad construction of last century,
and with all the important transactions arising from
the late World War. It was Baron James Rothschild
who obtained the concession for the Great Northern
Railway of France. In the course of time the house ob-
tained control of the Idra quicksilver mine; afterward the
Almaden mine in Spain was secured; so that the house of
Rothschild now have a monopoly of that metal. They
have figured in so many of the large national loans, the
great industrial developments, that to enumerate them
would fill a volume. By their family affiliations, extend-

THE JEW IN FINANCE AND BANKING 101

ing to every part of the globe, they have taught the
world's bankers the value of close co-operation between
mutually interested groups; and many families have fol-
lowed their example, of acting unitedly, with, if not equal,
at least with marked success. That was notable in the
case of the Seligmans, in the United States, and in the
later banking house of Kuhn, Loeb and Company.

But it is said by those familiar with banking circles,
that nothing could be more erroneous than the idea which
the anti-Semites have been sowing so laboriously, namely :
that Jewish firms act as a racial unit in their transactions.
There are conspicuous occasions on which Jewish firms
have not only not acted together, but have frankly com-
peted with each other, and in which they have ended in
being injurious to each other. This was observable in the
case of the joint-stock principle, which was introduced
into banks and institutions like the Credit-Mobilier, the
Dresdener Bank, and the Deutsche Bank, which groups
were founded mostly by combinations of Jewish firms.
The operation of this principle considerably diminished the
predominance of the Rothschilds in the financial world,
while it increased the general influence of the Jews in
international finance. In addition, a financial observer
notes the later opposition of such houses as Montague and
Rothschild, in London. The Sterns, he also points out,
opposed the Rothschilds and obtained the Portuguese
loans which the older firm was after.

Some instances are recorded of unusual courtesy
between Jewish bankers and their non- Jewish competitors,
among them that arising from the Baring failure of 1893,
which "brought to an end a rivalry of seventy years be-
tween the Barings and the Rothschilds/' But here, adds
an observer, "the Rothschilds intervened and prevented
the utter ruin of their rivals."

The Jewish significance in this field and the contribu-

102 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

tions the Jews in it have made to civilization, would have
to be gathered from all corners of the earth. Primarily,
they have been the discoverers of possibilities; later, the
promoters of the same, thus bringing into reality what
originally was but an idea.

Jewish financiers have advanced money for building
railroads in every country of the world. Sometimes in-
dustrials of the race have laid the tracks. The bankers
have financed manufacturers of many sorts in many
places. If you go down to Cape Town, you will find Jews
who have developed shipping there, and, in time, have
become great ship-owners. Jews have had a large part in
developing commerce in that part of the world. They
have founded industries there. They have invested their
funds in the building of railroads in Russia; in South
America, in the United States, in Canada. Baron
de Hirsh established the Balkan Railway system. The
Perieres have made local travel what it is about Paris ; to
another Jew every traveller south from Paris on the
Chemin-de-Fer-du-Midi is indebted.

Always the Jews adventure their capital in fields of
which others are sometimes afraid. They are frequently
pioneers, if you will, in opening the way today with their
millions to development and improvement, even as those
modest Jewish travellers who passed between Persia and
Italy and Spain a thousand years ago were pioneers in
the bringing in of education. Belgium owes her railways
to the bankers BischofF sheims ; the Prussian people owe
their railway systems to the Bleichroders, and so on, one
might list the valuable gifts of the Jews to commerce, to
economic values in every land in Europe, Asia, Africa,
North and South America.

Perhaps the greatest single benefit conferred upon
mankind in the present generation, through Jewish enter-
prise, is the rescue of miles of territory in Egypt which

THE JEW IN FINANCE AND BANKING 103

for five thousand years has been practically waste land
while humanity starved about it. Now, as Douglas
Jerrold said of Australia : " You have only to tickle the soil
with a hoe and it laughs back in harvests."

Speaking before the Commercial Geographical So-
ciety of Havre, General Willcocks, Director of the Reser-
voirs of Egypt, said of the building of the Assouan Dam:
"A few men endowed with clairvoyance have been con-
sidering for decades what we today all know, namely, the
possibility of building such a dam. But none of the group
showed more confidence than Ernest Cassel. The project
of building the Assouan Dam had been pigeon-holed for
years. In 1898 Sir Ernest presented himself with the
wished-f or capital and accompanied by Sir John Aird, and
Sir Benjamin Baker, as consulting engineer, undertook
to construct the Dam at Assouan, and also that at Assiout,
and to have both finished by 1903. On the advice of Sir
William Garstin, the Egyptian Government accepted the
proffer, and the work was begun. It was completed by
December, 1902!

"Think of the change this means," continued Will-
cocks, "in a country, flat as your hand; think of hundreds
of thousands of acres set out in grain and cotton, and
Assouan, with modern hotels teeming with people, where
but a few years ago, all was barren, and uninteresting;
where, when the river burst over its banks in its annual
flooding, the villagers fled for their lives, out toward the
desert to escape from threatening death."

To be sure Pierre Loti has deplored the disturbance
of the Egyptian silence; the night skies made to blush by
the flare of the electric lights of the city. But in the
meantime, a country that was once bare and forlorn, has
become seething with life, and health and prosperity
abide there. This is the work, the wonderful gift of a
Jew of this century, all the more wonderful in that it has

104 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

not been advertised and indeed has scarcely been heard of
by the majority. Heads of world governments know of
it; financial manipulators had been made aware of it, and
great engineers testify to the marvellous engineering
problems that were overcome in the building of the Dam;
but other than this, only the waving grain in the fertile
fields that now skirt the desert, and the Bedouins that
wander into town and recall the old days, tell the tale of
Sir Ernest Cassel's civilizing gift to the world.

Crossing Egypt to India, we come upon a notable
Jewish banking family of the East. The Sassoons, London
and Bombay bankers, have played a great part in building
up the industries of the East. They spring from a family
of Jews, who fled from Portugal during the Inquisition
period, and found a refuge in Mesopotamia. In the last
one hundred and fifty years they have become the indus-
trial builders of the East. Their ships are cared for in
the great Sassoon docks which are a feature of Bombay.
They have built and run canning factories, and what is
more, have planted the East with philanthropical and
educational institutions. Sir Abdallah Sassoon, who
wears the Star of India, is the head of this banking house,
which has branches and connections extending to Shang-
hai, Canton, Hongkong, Yokohama, and numerous points
in the East, as well as their Western connections in
London.

But we have had, in America, as well, our Jewish
miracle-workers. A recent anti-Semitic writer has writ-
ten of the late Mr. E. H. Harriman as having "helped
the banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Company by turning
the business of Western railroads into their hands/' This
is a curious reversal of facts, due, it may be, to mere hear-
say remarks which have lost their accuracy as they were
passed from lip to lip. The Union Pacific Railway and
its associated lines, which opened up the great West, were

THE JEW IN FINANCE AND BANKING 105

made possible only through the marvellous personality of
the late Mr. Jacob H. Schiff, a member of the banking
firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Company. When money was
wanting in the United States, when the Government itself
was hard put to it to raise funds for its needs, on the
strength solely of his international connections, Mr. Schiff
was instrumental in raising the needed capital for the
building of those Western roads, from foreign investors.
He thus became the motive power which sowed the West-
ern prairies with cities; which brought farmers with their
grain into ready connection with the great cities of the
continent and likewise with the ports of the country.

By his personal influence with foreign bankers Mr.
Schiff was able to finance the rebuilding of the Union
Pacific Railroad. In the Stock Exchange panic of May,
1901, through his firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Company, it is
said that Mr. Schiff held the financial power of the nation
in his hand. "It was Mr. SchifPs wise action and
moderation," writes a correspondent, "that prevented dis-
aster." What he did to establish community of interest
among competing railroads is known in detail by all finan-
ciers. It may be added that it was Mr. SchifFs firm that
was chosen to float the stock issues of the Union Pacific,
those of the Pennsylvania Railroad, of the Baltimore and
Ohio, and of the Western Union Telegraph Company. It
also subscribed for and floated three large Japanese war
loans. During the great World War it was of value to
the Government, to the municipality and to various other
governments in the raising and floating of war bonds.
One who was familiar with Mr. SchifFs great part in the
development of western railroads has said: "Why, if it
had not been for him, the western man who now motors
through the town in his automobile would still be sitting
behind his ox-team. We should have had no trans-conti-
nental service for years. It required a man of Mr.

106 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

Schiff's spotless integrity to convince the foreign investors
of the worthwhileness of such stock; as to the value of the
roads when built; for up to that point the Union Pacific
Rail Road was an unproven asset/'

Yes; in the matter of the development of the United
States in particular, the Jewish race has contributed a
mighty quota through its financiers and bankers, as well
as through its industrial and mercantile representatives.
It has given them great opportunities, to be sure, such,
perhaps, as no other country at the same period would
have been able to offer; but they have taken advantage of
them, and returned their indebtedness with heaping
measure.

It is by no means so easy to tabulate a race's good
deeds and its worthy citizens as it is to indict it, and them,
as a whole. The rise of individual Jews in America, from
penury to princely wealth, marks some splendid pages in
its history.

There began to arrive in the United States, in 1837,
one after the other, five brothers, named Seligman. They
opened modest little clothing shops for their capital was
small some in one town, some in another, and scattered
from San Francisco to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and even
to Alabama. They sold clothing; but as their profits came
in, they established a banking business. It would seem as
if today's international banking on the part of the Jew,
of which so much that is invidious has of late been said,
was initiated by Joseph Seligman, one of the five brothers,
who went abroad early in the seventies to dispose of cer-
tain American bonds. His task, it must be admitted, was
an easier one than that Mr. Schiff later undertook, for the
bonds Mr. Seligman carried to offer in foreign markets
were those of the United States Government. He, repre-
senting his brothers, was the first to place United States
bonds on the Stock Exchange at Frankfort, since which

THE JEW IN FINANCE AND BANKING 107

time the firm of Seligman Brothers, impregnable in the
esteem of their government and fellow citizens, have been
concerned with -every issue of United States bonds.

In 1879, when great "deals" were by no means so
frequent as in the present day, the house of Seligman,
which had practically financed the North in the Civil War,
with the Rothschilds co-operating, took over the whole of
the bonded loans of the United States, a matter of
$150,000,000. This house, since 1876, have been the finan-
cial agents of the Navy and State Departments of the
United States, and the agents accredited of the Govern-
ment. No greater history of a family's rise exists in
European finance, nor any greater instance of a nation's
confidence in the Jews.

About 1847, an emigrant arrived in New York from
Switzerland, of splendid industrial worth, though it is
probable that few suspected it as he proceeded upon his
modest way. He began as a travelling pedlar of stove-
polish and glue. Not so very long afterward, he had
found a way of making his own stock, and his profits
increased accordingly. When these were sufficient, he
began to import Swiss embroideries, which for many
years were staple attractions in all American drygoods
shops. In 1881, at the age of fifty-two, the former pedlar
of stove polish and glue was able to turn over to his sons a
prosperous embroidery business, leaving him free to
launch into a new career. He had invested in a silver
mine. It was not long before he discovered that to work
this successfully, he must have a smelting plant, and he
bought one in Denver, Colorado.

Next he turned all his attention to smelting, and with
his sons, who by this time had disposed of their em-
broidery business, enlarged his- smelting operations.
Today the smelting properties of this combined family, the
Guggenheims, known internationally under the general

108 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

title of "The American Smelting and Refining Company,"
are valued at $500,000,000.

Many similar stories might be added of the Jewish
fortunes built in and of Jewish worth to the United States
alone, as developers of industry, of commerce; as scientific
bankers ; as international forces which, far from menacing
the country, have often stabilized it, and proved themselves
to be agencies of special value to the Government.

These will some day be written, no doubt, and will
make instructive reading for any who, with honest enquiry,
may read them; but always it should be borne in mind that
while great fortunes have been made in these avenues of
practical life by Jews, the power to accrue great sums of
money can scarcely be considered a criterion by which to
measure civic or moral worth. This is rather to be arrived
at by a consideration of the use to which the owner puts
that fortune. It is from this point that we shall next con-
sider the Jew.

CHAPTER VI
The Jew in Philanthropy

"Public spirit was ever a characteristic of the Jew.
It has been his special distinction in this country that,
while contributing liberally to charitable and benevo-
lent objects favored by his fellow-citizens of different
race and faith, he asks from them nothing for the
objects which appeal primarily to Ms own. Hospitals
sustained by Jewish contributions make no discrimi-
nation in regard to the patients they admit; schools
and libraries maintained by Jewish beneficence are
open to all who can derive any benefit from them.' 9
(New York Journal of Commerce and Commercial Bulletin)

inconsistency has already been pointed out of the
JL attack upon the Jewish race as a money-loving and a
money-grasping people, by one, who, having amassed
$500,000,000, is himself five times as rich as any Jew in
the United States. It becomes even more glaring, as,
pressing through the eighty chapters of vituperation for
which this capitalist is responsible, you see with what
unrelenting prejudice he has caused the Jew's every act
to take on a color of unworthiness ; and the care with
which he has evaded the slightest tribute to or recognition
of the finer qualities of the race. It is a matter for amaze-
ment which grows greater as one proceeds to an examina-
tion of the anti-Semitism of the century that any, however
weak their understanding, however mis-employed their
imagination, could be hurried by their prejudices into
believing that a whole body, or party, whom they do not
like, are, therefore, a mere band of traitors and villains.
All races, as Professor Commons has said, have their
exemplars and defenders, who, as individuals, must be the
criterions by which the race is judged.

The attitude of the fanatics of today has been voiced
by one of *the foremost critics of the Jewish race, when

109

HO THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

he states that he is "not interested" in the Jew's religion.
This at once stamps the character of the complainant.
The Jew cannot be understood without interest in his
religion. It lies at the base of the Jewish character; it
interthreads the every thought of the race. Its special
spirit and significance as the mother-religion from which
so many other religions, major and minor, have sprung, is
interesting the scholars of today as never before. When
all is said and done, it is, perhaps, this resolute refusal to
be interested in the Jew as a fellow-being, which makes it
possible for the malicious to sow broadcast the most bane-
ful libels against him, and to go on propagating from gen-
eration to generation, the superstitions which were a blot
upon civilization two thousand years ago.

It is a stain upon that of today that men of illimitable
wealth may, unrebuked, turn the force of that wealth to
the rousing of prejudice between the peoples of a nation ;
when they may ward away all who would utter a -protest-
ing word in defense of the victims, by ridicule or by the
insinuation that money is back of such defense. In other
words, by imputing venal motives to those who should be
above such suspicion. It becomes a menace to the peace
of the nation, when, continuing for two years, eighty
chapters and more of hatred-provoking matter may be
steadily poured into the public consciousness with no
restraining intervention of the law, or counter-presenta-
tion on the part of citizens better disposed. There is,
indeed, as the result of this propaganda, a "Jewish Peril" ;
but it is peril for the Jew at the hands of the misled unless
the just thinkers in the world shall consent to be interested,
to the extent not of being pro- Jewish, but of being pro-
justice.

In all the chapters of "The International Jew/' the
Jew's better qualities, his actual part in protecting the
welfare of even one country, the United States of America,

THE JEW IN PHILANTHROPY ' 111

are not so much under-estimated, as deliberately mis-
stated, wilfully perverted. Notably is this the case in its
malevolent allusions to such a remarkable philanthropy as
that of the late Baron de Hirsch. The story has been so
manipulated as to be made to appear not as it was, a great,
unparalleled example of practical benevolence similar to
but so many times multiplied the benevolence that
brought the Irish famine victims to America in the middle
of the nineteenth century but, instead, as a political move
of foreign Jewish capitalists, as a first mighty step toward
establishing the ultimate international supremacy of the
Jew. To quote one such subversive paragraph :
, ' "When a great block of wealth in America was made
possible by the lavish use of another block of wealth from
across the seas ; that is to say, when certain Jewish immi-
grants came to the United States with the financial back-
ing of European Jewry behind them, it would be unfair
to explain the rise of that class of immigration by the
same rules which account for the rise of, say, the Germans
or the Poles who came here with no resource but their
ambition and strength. To be sure many individual Jews
come in that way, too, with no dependence but themselves,
but it would not be true to say that the massive control of
affairs which is exercised by Jewish wealth was won by
individual initiative; it was rather the extension of finan-
cial control across the sea."

What is the true story of those Russian Jews who
were helped to America in the '80s ? This, and this wholly :
that thousands were starving in Russia, unable to help
themselves in a country which deprived them of oppor-
tunity to live as human beings ; that one of the same race,
Baron de Hirsch, looked on their sufferings, considered
his own wealth and set about forming a plan by which to
raise the down-trodden. According to all records, he
would have had them remain where they were had he been

112 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

able to make sure that help there was possible. He drew
up plans for improving the condition of the Russian Jews
in Russia. He offered the Russian Government 50,000,000
francs to be devoted to the education of the Jews there,
but the Russian Government would only accept it on con-
dition that it might use the sum as it saw fit.

In view of the hopelessness of the situation, Baron
de Hirsch devised the Jewish Colonization Association,
with a nominal capital of 2,000,000, which was entirely
contributed by himself, the purposes of which association
were: "To assist and promote the emigration of Jews
from any part of Europe or Asia and principally from
countries in which they may, for the time being, be sub-
jected to any special taxes or political or other disabilities
to any parts of the world, and to form and to establish
colonies in various parts of North and South America
and other countries, for agricultural, commercial and
other purposes. 3 * Now, thirty years after this humani-
tarian work was begun while a sympathetic world looked
on, there arises one sufficiently subtle to accuse its orig-
inator, by inference, of mere scheming; of having hidden
under philanthropic cover a Jewish plan to "seize upon
financial control across the sea/ 5

It has been estimated that Baron Maurice de Hirsch
contributed upward of $100,000,000 to benevolent pur-
poses, a generous proportion of which has been devoted
to the up-building of his race in America. His benefac-
tions took the most practical form of philanthropy, and
were matters of personal thought, personal planning. He
saw things largely, and nothing more clearly than that the
great mass of his race which for thousands of years had
been restricted in most of the paths in which other men
were free, required moral re-habilitation. This he set
about accomplishing by means of education through
schools established in many lands.

THE JEW IN PHILANTHROPY 113

It is thirty-three years since the de Hirsch Fund was
established; since the great de Hirsch fortune was spilled
out upon the world, and from it a crop of notable men of
the race has already sprung up who are carrying on the
work of educating their brothers all over the globe. This
is the very realization of the Baron's hope, which was, it
is said, that the second, rather than the first generation of
his beneficiaries, would demonstrate the value of his
thought to the world. J^<

Baron de Hirsch, it has been said, was a materialist, a
pleasure-lover, and so adventurous in his business schemes,
that the banking firm with which, originally, he was con-
nected as clerk, preferred not to take him in as partner.
In fact, until the success of his eastern railways was
assured, he was looked upon as a reckless visionary, who
might come to grief, and carry others with him. There
would appear always to have been in him, however, the
humanitarian and philanthropic instinct. Early in his
career he established and sustained trade schools in the
East. He is quoted as having written: "I never ask
whether the cry of necessity comes from my faith or not;
but what is more natural than that I should find my
highest purpose in bringing to the followers of Judaism,
who have been oppressed for a thousand years, who are
starving in misery, the possibilities of physical and moral
regeneration?"

Baron de Hirsch's practical humanitarianism and not
his desire to establish or have part in establishing inter-
national power among the Jew in matters financial, was
the real and only reason for his great, his far-sighted
generosity. It has been said, and truly, that the Baroness
de Hirsch, his wife, was his inspiration; that she led him
on and directed him in the disposal of his fortune. There
is not an atom of reason for supposing that the Baron
was influenced by any other motive or personality.

114 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

He was a well-derived man, the third of his family to
bear the title of Baron. The Baroness, like himself, came
from a family which for several generations had enjoyed
political, religious and social freedom, together with
great wealth. She was the daughter of Raphael J.
Bischoffsheim, a notable Belgian banker, Senator, and
philanthropist, for whom a boulevard in Brussels was
named She grew up closely associated with her father,
sharing with him in the founding of schools and homes
for Jewish girls and in the establishing of educational
societies. From her childhood she had been accustomed
to study the needs of her race, of human-kind generally.
She went into her marriage pre-eminently fitted for the
care of the great fortune her husband was to bring her.

As you trace the history of this very remarkable
couple, you can nowhere find a suggestion in it of a seek-
ing for political or financial power, nor any of the other
menacing qualities which biassed minds would now
ascribe to them. Baron de Hirsch's every utterance in
connection with his great philanthropy was that of one
concerned only with the moral rehabilitation of a race.
So early as 1891 he impressed constantly upon all who
acted for him in the distribution of his wealth, his desire
to see the Jews return to agriculture and handicrafts. He
hoped to see them: "The sturdy yeomanry of the countries
wherein they settled."

The Baron had been identified with Balkan railways,
as every financier knows. He had been brought into con-
tact with conditions in Russia affecting his own people
which deeply touched his sympathies. He had, upon one
occasion, sent to the Empress of Rflssia his check for
40,000 for the relief of this people. It was the convic-
tion of the impossibility of assisting the race while they
remained in Russia that led to the exodus of the Jews from
that country between 1880 and the '90s; or, as the

THE JEW IN PHILANTHROPY 115

'World's Work" has said, to the "dumping of masses" of
Jews upon the Atlantic seaboard. Rather inhuman, when
you come to look at it, is it not, to describe so the result of
a work than which nothing greater has been done for a
people since Moses led the early Hebrews from the thral-
dom of Egypt?

Baron de Hirsch planned, not a concentration but a
great scattering of his race. In his planning, he was con-
siderate of other peoples. Foreseeing the possible objec-
tions that other governments might make to such a great
inflow of foreigners, he devised measures by which to
regulate the distribution of the refugees, according to
their physical fitness, their industrial equipment, or train-
ing. He went so far as to select, as possible emigrants,
the best physical specimens of the Russian Jews and those
who gave promise of "making good" in agriculture, in
the handicrafts, and as moral assets in their new homes.

Of the specific results of that experiment we shall
speak in a later chapter. The point here to be observed
in this example of Jewish philanthropy, which the justly-
disposed will not be inclined to dispute, is that, at every
step Baron de Hirsch put ideals, unmixed with mercenary
motive, into his benefactions. As he recedes into the
past his proportions appear more and more classic. He
left no posterity, but made humanity his heir, and his
wife as administrator of his fortune. It has been said to
have been the intention of the Baroness to give away all
her property before her death, retaining only a competence
on which she herself might live while sustaining two
adopted sons; but this was not to be. She left a rich
fortune which went, according to her will, to buttress the
philanthropies of the Baron and herself in Galicia, in
Argentina, the de Hirsch Trade School and Fund, and the
Clara de Hirsch Home for Working Girls in New York

116 THE JEW AtfD CIVILIZATION

City, and to ai<i in sustaining the work of the Pasteur and
similar Institutes.

The scientific institutions of France have been benefi-
ciaries in many other instances, of Jewish philanthropy.
Elie Metchnikoff, of the Pasteur Institute, speaking of the
gift to that work of 40,000,000 francs by the Jewish banker
Osiris, of Bordeaux, said: 'We have come into a fortune
which will enable us to carry on our work on a larger scale
than ever before , . . By this donation Osiris made
himself one of the great benefactors of mankind."

It is said that the Baron de Hirsch was not a religious
man, but he was, nevertheless, a man typical of his race in
the manner in which he gained riches in the world and
gave them back with interest. He was the great modern
successor to that other lover of his race, Joseph Nasi,
whose story has been outlined in an earlier chapter. That
of Baron de Hirsch is less picturesque, perhaps, since he
was. nearer to our own time, and essentially a modern
thinker, living and moving in western civilization; but as
an inspiration for future philanthropists, he is the greatest
and most humanitarian figure of his own time and race.

The nineteenth century was, throughout, a remark-
able one in the history of the Jewish philanthropy. While
the poorer among the Jews and the least educated passed
through successive hard periods of need, of cruel injus-
tices, of sufferings and persecution in many parts of the
world, jpet the century brought to light some of the noblest
spirits the race has produced in recent times; some of the
most brilliant intellects, polished in the great universities
of the world; and, as well the most untrammelled oppor-
tunities for financial progress and for philanthropic action
that had come to them in the present era ; this because the
race was able to express itself, being politically free as
tfieir 'f eUowmeo.

THE JEW IN PHILANTHROPY 117

Very early in the century Sir Moses Montefiore rises
into prominence, not only as one of the most respected
brokers of London co-operating with the house of Roths-
child, but as a powerful factor in the establishing of the
Provincial Bank of Ireland, and as the promoter of great
gas companies which furnished the lightings for the
larger cities of Europe. A financial power in his day, Sir
Moses Montefiore set the standard of Jewish integrity
very high; yet it is as the greatest Jewish philanthropist
of his period that his memory is most cherished today.

Upon retiring from active participation in business
transactions, Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore travelled
extensively, going, seven times in all, to Palestine, the
beloved land of his race. But he visited, as well, the land
of the Steppes, Turkey, Morocco wherever he had reason
to know the people of his race were afflicted. It is said
that as he travelled he endowed schools and hospitals,
using his own fortune liberally, as well as dispensing sums
which had been entrusted to him to be distributed accord-
ing to his discretion.

One of his great missions was undertaken in 1840 or
thereabouts, in company with the distinguished Jewish
lawyer, Cremieux, for the purpose of defending several
Jews at Damascus who were being held on the testimony
of the superstitious upon an accusation of ritual murder.
The case was one of the most celebrated of last century;
one in which the Rothschilds, and the bankers Salomon
and Goldsmid, Louis Phillippe, Queen Victoria, Metter-
nich, Lord Palmerston, and Mehmet Ali had part. "The
Damascus affair," as it has come down in history, was
one of the most complicated international cases of the
period. It culminated, after months of the most consum-
mate patience and zeal on the part of Sir Moses and his
Associates, in the release of the prisoners, and the awaken-
ing of more human sympathy for the Jewish race than

118 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

they had ever known. Clergymen preached for them; in
Parliaments men rose to their rescue and pronounced
against the treatment theretofore accorded them. The
famous Daniel O'Connell rose at a meeting held in their
behalf at the Mansion House and cried out: "Is not a
Jew in every relation of life an example? Is he not a
good father? a good son? Are they not true friends?
Are they not honest, industrious?" And, his emotion
increasing, he demanded with great intensity : "I appeal
to all Englishmen to raise their voices in defence of the
victims of that shameful oppression. May the appeal go
from one end of the British Isles to the other, and if the
concurrence of an Irishman be wanting, here am I to
testify to it!"

One of the most familiar cries of the present-day
enemies of the Jews is: "Beware of them! They are
federated! Arm yourselves, you countless millions: but,
even then, be on your guard ! Was not the brave Goliath,
armed and in mail, killed by the treacherously flung
stone ?" Let us look into the only form of federation that
really exists among the Jews, the Alliance Israelite
Universelle, and its purpose, while bearing in mind the
fact that as a movement, it rose out of the period of "The
Damascus case," when such unaccustomed sympathy was
shown them as a people.

A historian of their race has called it the period of
the re-birth of Jewish self-respect. The object of the Alli-
ance Israelite Universelle is : "To encourage by all means
at our disposal the pursuit of useful handicrafts; to com-
bat, where necessary, the ignorance and vice engendered
by oppression; to work, by the power of persuasion and
by all the moral influences at our command, for the emanci-
pation of our brethren who still suffer," etc., etc.

It is out of this federation, surely as noble as might
be formed, that so many cruel charges have been made

THE JEW IN PHILANTHROPY 119

within the present century: but it is also the source of the
great philanthropies that have gone to the education of
the Jews and which, in a surprisingly short time have
re-built large numbers, both morally and physically. The
attempt at organization has brought the race into har-
mony with the rest of the progressing world as it has not
been in a thousand years. The cry of all sorts and con-
ditions of men since the days of Voltaire, Montaigne,
Rousseau, has been : Unite ! In union there is strength !
United we stand, divided we fall! It has become the
watchword of capital and of labor; of religion and of poli-
tics; it has spread from social group to social group.
How, then, is it possible that the Jews, sharing the com-
mon education of the world, should not likewise make a
unified effort to help each other toward better health,
better education, more complete freedom, whether political
or religious? The right to do so should not be questioned
in the democratic modern world where it has become a
necessity, as well as a right, for mankind in general.

Men of munificent generosity have risen among the
Jews in every age. One of the de Pintos of Amsterdam
left many millions to be distributed among the needy. He
was catholic in his kindnesses, as many others of his race
have been, and left money to non-Jewish orphan asylums,
to the clergy and the State. Mordecai Meisel of Prague,
who died in 1601, was able to amass enormous wealth with
which he clothed the poor of his community, giving freely
to needy Christians. So high was his reputation for
integrity that he was given permission to establish his
own mint. His great property, however, was confiscated
to the crown when he died, and while his name is still a
synonym for wealth untold and boundless generosity
among his people, his heirs inherited none of his wealth.

But the constructive philanthropy of the - last and
present centuries means far more to the Jewish race and to

120 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

raising of the moral and intellectual standards of the
world, generally, than all the great gifts of the past.
One of the noblest philanthropists Russia has known, was
the late Baron Horace Giinsberg, of St. Petersburg, whose
father before him had invested a fortune in an effort to
raise the standard of life for his afflicted people in that
land. The philanthropies of Baron Giinsburg were too
many and too various to be recalled here; as, too, are
those of European philanthropists of the race, to trace
whom we should have to name every city and country of
that continent. Joseph Epstein, for example, in Poland
made "heaps of money" in banking. He won the respect
of non- Jewish associates, and, dying, left the greater part
of his fortune to philanthropic institutions.

Turn to Germany and at random you will find Herr
and Frau Louis Hille establishing a trust of a million and
a quarter for the providing of board and lodgings, for
persons, irrespective of religion or race, who are unable
to earn a living. A philanthropist in Austria, Joseph
Porges, for the indiscriminate advantage of all, estab-
lished art and musical institutions; the procession is
endless of Jewish philanthropists who have placed the
human need before the race need. Sir Ernest Cassel,
desiring to give a memorial to the late Bang of England,
gave a million dollars to be devoted equally to the needy
Germans in England and the needy English in Germany.

Wherever an educated Jew is found there you will
discover that a principle of up-building of character and
community underlies his giving, whether this giving be
of money or personal service. This will be especially
apparent as the philanthropies of American Jews are con-
sidered, and they began with the first of the race to
arrive in the American settlements. Early colonial his-
tory supplies numerous instances of their public spirit.
The monument that commemorates the Battle of Bunker

THE JEW IN PHILANTHROPY 121

Hill also commemorates the philanthropic patriotism of
that most picturesque Jewish figure, Judah Tuoro, who,
lies now in the Jewish cemetery at Newport, the town of
his birth, after having done considerable good in several
parts of the world, Tuoro was born of one of the families
of Jews who refused to remain in New York when this
was occupied by the British, though many non- Jewish
folk remained to profit by trade with the invaders. Tuoro
and Amos Lawrence were the two patriots who supplied
equal amounts for the building of the famous monument
on "the hill/* He went afterward to New Orleans, where
numerous mementoes of him exist and helpful organiza-
tions bear his name.

Newport, too, has her memorials to him, among
others, the old "Norse Mill" which stands in the midst of
the little Tuoro Part and which he purchased for the
city, to save it as a historic landmark. Dying, Tuoro
bequeathed fifty thousand dollars to Sir Moses Montefiore,
for distribution among the needy Jews of the old world.
On Tuoro's tombstone, in the cemetery at Newport, you
may still read these words: "The last of his race, he is
inscribed in the book of philanthropy, to be remembered
forever."

Speaking some years ago of the characteristics of the
Jews of America, George Cooper Pardee, then Governor
of California, said: "The Jew takes care of his own poor
and helps to care for other peoples' poor. He possesses
human sympathy and it is backed up by business judg-
ment. When he establishes a charity, it is sure to be well
administered." California had had an opportunity of see-
ing the uncalculating philanthropy of the Jew in the
character of Adolph J. H. Sutro. The visitor to San
Francisco may well give a thought to one who contributed
so greatly to that city's progress.

122 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

Sutro was a youth of twenty when his family, ruined
by the revolution of eighteen forty-eight, crossed the ocean
in one of the sailing vessels of those days, and settled in
Baltimore. In those days America was gold-mad, and
very shortly Sutro, a young but ambitious engineer, fol-
lowing the example of many others, went west. There,
however, he met with unlooked-for obstacles, and, with
the tiny capital that was his, he went on to San Francisco
and opened a little shop. Prudent, and with a purpose
before him, he patiently plodded on until, having a fuller
purse than before, he began to look into the subject of
mining again, but this time as a practical engineer.
Presently he perfected a smelter devised for the reduction
of silver ore, which, being a technical success, was shortly
a financial one.

About this time the "Comstock lode" was the topic
on every tongue, though the difficulties that lay in the
working of it were a serious drawback to its success. The
great depth of the shaft made the heat intolerable for the
miners. There were doubts expressed as to the use of
continuing to experiment with it. Sutro, however, set to
work upon the problem of a relieving tunnel. When he had
worked it out to his satisfaction, he sought capital to carry
out his plan. He tried in America, and in Europe, but
without success; but, finally, he was able to gather a group
about him, and the Sutro Tunnel Company, of which the
world was to hear so much, was formed. With the
approval of Congress, the work was then begun which
resulted, some nine and one-half years later, in the com-
pletion of the famous Sutro Tunnel. The main shaft of
this is twenty thousand and five hundred feet long; twelve
feet wide, ten feet deep, and it lies sixteen hundred feet
below the surface.

Upon the completion of this great work Sutro sold
his interest in the company and returned to San Francisco.

THE JEW IN PHILANTHROPY 123

There, at a period when the future of the city appeared
to be negligible, Sutro invested heavily in real estate. It
is said that at one time he owned one-tenth of the city, in-
cluding among his possessions the Heights that now bear
his name. To this time his attention had been fixed upon
gaining, it may be; but it now turned to giving returns to
the city which had given him opportunity. His first
effort was to beautify it. He scattered statues through its
streets and avenues; next he built a notable aquarium
where specimens from the Pacific might be studied He
built public baths, and threw the great park about his
palatial residence open to the public. This was the first
utterance of munificent philanthropy upon the western
coast

In 1887 Mr. Sutro presented the city of San Fran-
cisco with a replica of Bartholdy's "Liberty Enlightening
the World/' which greets the newcomer in our own bay
as he approaches the new world. Finally, he bequeathed
his home and park to the city and a two-hundred thousand
volume library to the State of California. Who may say
that a citizen like Mr. Sutro has not proven one of the
finest the country has produced? Who can, conscien-
tiously, take part in assailing a race whose exemplars are
such as he? In his day he was the peerless philanthropist
of the West. But in the East also the race was identify-
ing itself with good works, and again this was through its
recent arrivals. One cannot avoid the thought, when
glancing over the many contributions which the American
Jews have made to western civilization, of what a pity it is
that such strained attention should be devoted to the
ferreting out of the Jews' faults when so many of his
virtues lie open to the view. It is true that we find what
we look for, and what a change might be wrought in
public sentiment, what an era of peace and good will
might be established, were we to set about it by inaugurat-

124 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

ing a real effort at mutual understanding amongst the
races that mingle in the United States! The list of bene-
factions by the Jews in New York alone, many of them
free to non-Jews as to Jews how incalculably they out-
weigh the shortcomings with which the race is so often
and so wrongly charged !

In a work of this character one may deal only, accord-
ing to conventions, with the deeds of the dead; hence; in
touching upon the present day Jewish philanthropies scant
justice may be done great-hearted members of the race,
whose public-spirited benevolence speaks through so many
avenues. The names of such men as Joseph Seligman in
the past are interwoven with the history of great educa-
tional institutions; with movements making for civic
improvement. He founded the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.
Someone has said of the Jewish merchant: "Of course he
rises, because he mingles ideals and hope in all his trans-
actions/' Perhaps those ideals are what turn the success-
ful Jew into an especially far-seeing philanthropist; they,
it may be, keep the memory of his own struggles freshly
before him.

The indefatigable generosity of the Jew during the
strenuous days of the war was universally recognized dur-
ing that dread period; but, lest we forget, we may give
here the appraisal of them which has been made by Mr.
Herbert Hoover, who, of all others, was in a position to
make a just one. Writing from the Department of Com-
merce in the present year, (1923), Secretary Hoover has
said:

"During the nine years that I have been actively con-
nected with the larger American measures of relief to
Europe, I have had intimate association with various Jew-
ish organizations engaged in these labors. I have fre-
quently had cause to comment upon the extraordinary geiy
erosity and liberality of the American Jews in their charit-

THE JEW IN PHILANTHROPY 125

able contributions. Indeed, their voluntary contributions
exceeded that of any other American group, and ranged
from the stinted savings of the poorest workman to the
full outpouring of those in more fortunate positions.

"During the acute periods in Europe, in order to
assure the maximum saving of life and prevention of suf-
fering within our resources, it was necessary to establish
the closest co-operation in administration of American
relief measures and this co-operation has been given by the
Jewish Joiftt Distribution Committee with unexampled
breadth of vision and singleness of purpose. . . .
the American Jews have subscribed royally to general
funds and in the administration of their own special funds
have pursued steadily the broad-minded policy of co-opera-
tion in relief of all suffering, and literally hundreds of
thousands of non- Jewish peoples were embraced in their
efforts equally with the Jews. This broad sympathy so
impressed the many countries in Eastern Europe as to
shame the persecution of the Jews which during the
periods of utter chaos were incipient in many communities.

"Not only has there been this great outpouring of
generosity but there has been a great measure of personal
service. I have served with the representatives of Jewish
groups in joint efforts. ... No written appreciation
can form adequate tribute to the service these men and
women have given so wholeheartedly, so efficiently and at
great personal sacrifice. The real appreciation and grati-
tude to those who gave of their means and services comes
from the hearts of the millions whom they have served

"There is no brighter chapter in the whole history of
philanthropy than that which could be written of the work
of the American Jews during the past nine years/'

The philanthropy with which the name of Mr. Nathan
Straus is most popularly associated and generally revered,
is the establishment of milk stations in New York thirty

126 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

years ago, and which are still supported by him; but these
represent but one of his many humanitarian gifts to the
world. He has helped Christians and Moslems as well as
his own race* His motto, as somewhere written, is:
"Give till it feels good/' He has established milk stations
in London; soup-kitchens in Jerusalem, and coal stations
in New York, open to all He has established preven-
toriums for consumptive children in New Jersey and a
Pasteur Institute in Jerusalem. In times of panic he has
maintained lodging houses for the needy, and "penny
meals" from his milk-depots. A "practical idealist/' he
has been called, and few can question that this is well-
merited.

The music lovers of New York, the art lovers, the
students in these departments at various colleges, what-
ever their race, can scarcely touch life without benefiting
by the philanthropy and public spirit of Adolph Lewisohn.
His conspicuous gifts to the city in these fields the School
of Mines at Columbia; the great Stadium next the College
of the City of New York and many other of his benefac-
tions especially in educational lines, must make many
future generations his beneficiaries; make them rise up
and call him blessed. Mr. Lewisohn is said to have made
his money in mines. So too, was Simon Guggenheim's
fortune made, and each has given back a School of Mines
to ease the way of future geologists. Mr. Lewisohn has
made his gift to his home city, New York; Mr. Guggen-
heim to the West

The most interesting characteristic of Jewish philan-
thropists and one that is clearly common to the race is that
haphazard plays no part in their benefactions. They are
as constructive as they are various. The race has another
remarkable characteristic in that it utilizes anniversaries
and celebrates its holidays, even as it perpetuates the
memory of its dead, as occasions on which to do good.

THE JEW IN PHILANTHROPY 127

A couple in Chicago celebrate their wedding anniversary
by the gift of $52,000 for the prevention of malnutrition
among children; another pair in New York, upon a like
occasion, donates $75,000 to a Denver preventorium for
children. In New York, too, Mr. and Mrs. Felix War-
burg celebrate their silver wedding by a gift of $100,000
to a local worthy cause. The sum outright of $250,000
is given to Cornell University by Mr. Benny Loewy; Mrs.
Mayer, in Chicago, as a memorial to her husband, pre-
sents $50,000 to the North-Western University in every
direction, but especially in that of educational institutions,
the stream of Jewish philanthropy flows.

None but the initiated could compute the vast sums
given away by the late Mr. Jacob Schiff to meet the needs
of his race generally, and this to out-of-the-way groups
and in out-of-the-way spots in the United States, in
Europe, in Palestine. Bearing in mind that according to
the information that is accessible to the public Mr. Schiff
was not among the abnormally rich of the country, he
was, from the beginning of his career, one of the most
generous givers. His gifts in the course of the year, scat-
tered in many directions, did not, it is said, amount to much
less than a million dollars a year. His philanthropy has
had part in the building of many of the best known Jewish
charities. He founded Chairs at Harvard and at Colum-
bia Universities; and made annual contributions to such
institutions as the Teachers' College. In addition to sub-
scribing regularly to many local Jewish Institutions, he
contributed large sums to aid the Jews in foreign lands,
in even far-away China.

A mention of late Jewish philanthropy could scarcely
be made without reference to the gifts of Henry A. Dix,
who but a short time ago made over to his employees a
large business which he had built up, together with a
working capital of $250,000. He also surrendered his

128 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

beautiful country home to the Young Women's Hebrew
Association as a place of recreation for its members. Mr.
Dix is one of that much assailed Jewish group, the Rus-
sian, He came here for asylum at the age of forty, and
has expressed his thanks to America in these munificent
gifts to his race.

Taken all in all, there is nothing connected with the
study of Jewish characteristics more fascinating, more
enlightening than to look into the philanthropies of the
race. Money makers the Jews are, but Midas was not of
the race. Nor are Midas traits tolerated where their
ghost even appears. This was made plain at a meeting
held a while ago, at which the plan was being discussed of
opening a new school.

"But" demurred one present, "that will take a lot of
money!" Up sprang one, then, on the instant, "What is
money for if not to be spent for the uplift of humanity",
he cried; and it should be said, perhaps, that the last
speaker was one who has been singled out for special vili-
fication by the Ford author, as "The American Enigma".

But there are other philanthropies that mean as
much, if not more to a people as the giving of monies;
and in no race is the philanthropy of service more highly
rated, more constantly urged than among the Jews. They
look beyond the momentary need of their people; toward
the development of character; of the ideal character that
should express the "People of the Book". Not infre-
quently they give their lives in the same effort Such a
Jewish philanthropist was Dr. Joseph Krauskopf, who
passed away but recently and who left behind him a will
which every one who would glimpse the inner soul of the
Jew should real We may fittingly close this view of
Jewish philanthropy with an excerpt from it, in which the
testator addresses his children. Dr. Krauskopf, who was
scurrilously disparaged by the Ford scribe, was an immi-

THE JEW IN PHILANTHROPY 129

grant to America, coming from Prussia at the age of
fourteen. He died revered and beloved by many non-
Jews, and distinguished as "the foremost Rabbi, if not the
greatest preacher in the land" in the opinion of his race.

This was his parting message to his children; to the
world:

'When, in 1876, I decided to enter the Hebrew
Union College of Cincinnati, to study for the Jewish min-
istry, I knew I had chosen a life-calling, which, even if
successful, would yield little more than a respectable liv-
ing. Experience has proved that I judged aright. Be-
yond my home, my library and household effects, and the
few thousand dollars invested, which sum represents for
the most part, matured endowments from life insurance,
I own nothing.

"I therefore have no worldly goods to bequeath to
you, my dear children. And I would not have wanted it
otherwise. I believe I have done my full duty towards
you in having afforded you a good education and in hav-
ing set before you the example of a life consecrated to
labor and earnest striving after the higher ideals. Even
if Providence had chosen to bestow a fortune upon me, I
would have regarded myself as having been entrusted with
it solely as custodian for the benefit of others, rather than
as a personal possession to be used by me and by my
family.

"Too often have I seen a father's fortune become the
undoing of his children, and, rather than expose you to
such a risk, I rejoice I have no fortune to leave you, my
dear children. You have received the necessary education
and the home stimulus necessary to enable you^ to hew
out for yourselves a useful career, without the aid of an
inheritance. With far less advantages to begin a life's
career than you have enjoyed, I was obliged to make my
way in life from my twelfth year. And I have, seemingly,

130 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

been all the stronger for it. The consciousness that what-
ever fortune you shall have, whatever honorable position
you shall occupy is of your own making, will some day
become to you a source of supreme satisfaction; and let
whatever encouragement I have given you toward attain-
ing that end, be one of my legacies to you."

This is a glimpse of the soul of the race against
which we have, of late, been hearing so much that is
alarming. Let us turn to a view of the Jew in literature.

CHAPTER VII

4

.ts*^.

The Jew in Literature

"The ancient Hebrew poetry is full of the aptest,
sweetest and most impressive descriptions of nature
and all her works and of the influence of nature on
the spirit of man. 'Canst thou bind the sweet influence
of the Pleidesf 'He maketh me to lie down in green
pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters/ 'Con-
sider the lilies of the Held, how they grow * No race
has ever surpassed the Jewish descriptions of either
the beauties or the terrors of the nature which en-
virons man."

CHAHLES W. ELIOT.
(In address delivered in Boston, November, 1905)

WRITING in the last century and in his essay on
Greek art, Matthew Arnold remarks that "distinc-
tions of race in the early days were not of the odious and
fantastic character which they have been in modern times/'
But, however odious and fantastic these distinctions were
in Arnold's day, the twentieth century has already given
proof of the capacity of such distinctions to take on yet
more unworthy and sinister shapes. It has arrived at an
open, derisive attack upon the Jewish Scriptures. Not
only is Mr. Belloc under the impression that no one is
interested in Jewish literature, or reads it, nowadays, but
Mr. Chamberlain, having- strained a multitude of points to
prove the contemptible character of the Jews, proceeds to
define the books of the prophets as wholly inferior to those
of the Greek poets and philosophers. Though impotent to
take away the glory which scholars of two thousand years
have allowed the Jews as the People of the Book, yet he
permits his troubled mind to relieve itself by belittling
appraisals of the Writings and their authors, though by
so doing he more than once betrays his lack of real ac-

131

132 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

quaintance with them, while setting himself in opposition
to the verdict of ages. Scholars of very divergent points
of view have concurred in pronouncing that the Jews in
their Scriptures have provided humanity with the mind
stuff out of which all literature, as we know it has been
spun. Bigotry has fattened on disputing these writings ;
controversy has thriven on them, and theologies have risen
from them; poets have been inspired by them; laws
have taken their fundamentals from them; theories of
ethics have been evolved from them; all human conduct
has been affected by them; the great events of history have
been shaped by them; the common speech reflects in its
commonest axioms and even its word combinations, that
of the Book of the Jewish people.

'We continue to 'heap coals of fire' upon the heads
of those who have injured us" ; "we eat, we drink and are
merry/ 7 even as those early authors described : "how the
mighty are fallen"; "hip and thigh"; "love thy neighbor
as thyself" ; "there were giants on the earth in those days" ;
"the wife of thy bosom"; "a soft answer turneth away
wrath"; "whoso sheddeth man's blood"; "man is born to
trouble as the sparks to fly upward"; "the root of the
matter"; "the morning stars sang together" in every
phase of speech of today, of thought, where the perfect
expression is sought, back with the instinct of the homing
bird goes the world to those Scriptures.

They are the crystallized thought of present as well
as of extinct humanity; of prehistoric ages, gathered and
treasured and formulated by the reverent Hebrews of three
and more thousands of years ago. Every ancient and
modern poet, every philosopher and scholar, every states-
man; even those who would deny the theory of God, and
glory in their unbelief, in the very act of denial have some-
where paid their homage to these ancient writings. Their
aphorisms, axioms, proverbs pop up most unexpectedly in

THE JEW IN LITERATURE 133

all modern tongues, so that in English, or French; in
Italian, or Spanish in the Oriental tongues, even, they
are the language key to mutual understanding.

One cannot recall a literary work of the present era
which does not spring from them. Dante was possible
only through them; Milton is a monument to them; while
Racine wrote of the Greeks he shaped them from the
Hebrew point of view. They inspired Palestrina and the
throng of musicians who followed Handel; the art of the
Middle Ages was all Biblical. Drama rose from the same
source. Few modern works exist which are not born of
Biblical problems, Biblical themes. Moulton traces
"Faust" to the New Testament query:

"What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world
and lose his own soul?" and the Old Testament, with which
we have here to do, propounds the same question in other
phrase form which had been put to still earlier people.

Some years ago Edmund Clarence Stedman, in a
course of lectures delivered before Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity on the "Nature and Elements of Poetry" gave this
appreciation of the literature of the Jews :

"It has been said of the Hebrew language that its
every word is a poem; and there are books of the Old
Testament, neither lyrical nor prophetic, so exquisite, in
kind, that I call them models of impersonal art. . . .
In the narrative books of the Bible, the good and the bad
appear without disguise. All is set forth with a frankness
that made the heart of the Hebrew tent-dweller the heart
of the world thereafter . . .

"We think of inspiration, and a Hebrew seer glows in
the prophetic East; of gnomic wisdom and thought, and
many fixed white stars shine tranquilly along the equinox,
from Lucretius to Emerson . . . but with Hebrew
poetry, that of the Bible, we have more to do since we
derive very closely from it. There is no literature at once

134 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

so grand and so familiar to us. Its inherent racial genius
was emotional, and therefore lyrical . . . and of so
fiery and prophetic a cast that its personal outbursts have
a loftiness beyond those of any other literature . . ."

Nor is this all, for, coming to the poetry of the Book,
Mr. Stedman says :

"There is no more wonderful poetry of the emotional
order than the psalms of David and his compeers relating
to their own trials and agonies, their loves and hates and
adorations. . . . Modern self-expression is not so
simple and direct . . . We feel, in the naivete of
the Davidic lyre, the stress of human nature in its articu-
late moods. . . . This gives to the poetry of the Scrip-
tures an attribute possessed only by the most creative and
impersonal literature of other tongues that of univer-
sality. . . . Technical abandon, allied with directness
of conception and faithful revelation of human life makes
for universality; makes of the Hebrew Scriptures a world's
book that can be translated into all tongues with surpass-
ing effect, notably into a language almost as direct and
elemental as its own, that of our Anglo-Saxon, in its
Jacobean strength and clarity/'

The late Lyman Abbott said of these scriptures and
of the Jew in literature: "In my judgment the American
people owe more to the ancient Hebrews than to any other
ancient people; more than to either the Greeks or the
Romans, because we owe to the Hebrews our ethical and
spiritual ideas. ... I hope the time will come when
the laws and literature of the ancient Hebrews will be
studied as now are studied the ancient laws and literature
of the Greeks and Romans ; and when it will be universally
recognized that no man ignorant of the literature of the
ancient Hebrews is a well educated man."

These Jewish scriptures, these many books of the
Jews bound in one, constitute the most widely circulated

THE JEW IN LITERATURE 135

literature in the world. The great, peculiar quality about
them, and it is one no other book in the world possesses,
is that their character and composition are such that they
can be and are translated into every known language with-
out their beauty being impaired or their message lost.
Again, far from there being a slackening of interest in
the Scriptures, they are being studied today as never
before, even the unintelligent having become aware that
to remain wholly unacquainted with this ancient and
accessible literature, is to be lacking in the first essential
of modern culture.

Ex-President Eliot of Harvard has emphasized the
worth of these Jewish writings in a way that should stamp
it upon the memory of all who read. He says : "In many
other literatures cosmogonies are found, i. e., accounts of
the creation of the universe; but nowhere can be found an
account of creation so superb and so sound, all modern
knowledge and speculation taken into account, as that
given in the first sentence in the Hebrew Bible: 'In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth* . . .
The descriptions of the Hebrew literature have never been
equalled and they can never be surpassed.

"The Jewish conception of man's nature as [therein]
set forth, sound all the depths and reach all the heights.
Human lust, cruelty and treachery, and human misery and
sorrow can never be more vividly portrayed than they are
in the Hebrew Scriptures. Neither can the splendor of
human courage, magnanimity and justice, the steady glow
of human love and the incitements of courage and hope
be more nobly set forth. Concerning man the Jewish seers
asked all the fundamental questions which subsequent
philosophers have asked, and answered them better."

A host of other authorities might be cited to prove
how the opinions of the learned and the wise for centuries
have concurred as to the value of these ancient writings;

136 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

as to the unassailable literary height of their authors, the
Jews. Mr. Wells speaks of their Book, so full of "glimpses
of the Infinite" as "the most remarkable collection of an-
cient documents in the world/'

Walter Bagehot says the book expresses as no other
ancient book does, the notion of progress. Because of
this characteristic, he thinks it rare in the histories of
humanity. "Savages," he says, "regard what is as the
norm. They cannot conceive of change in the past or the
future. As against this, the Hebrew prophets with
splendid indignation, regarded the present condition of
their nation as abominable, and felt a confidant hope that
the divine plan of the universe involved an amelioration
of those conditions, not alone for themselves, but for the
whole world." In that lies the great significance of this
gift of the Scriptures : they are for the whole world. The
literature of a race, it has come to nourish, spiritually, the
great human family.

There is no greater marvel in the world than this
ancient yet modern literature which emerges so richly
full from the mysterious life of five thousand years ago.
It is said it was borne down the stream of that Eastern
people by oral tradition solely, to the days of Hezekiah,
when "literature" is said to have flourished. During
Hezekiah's reign the Proverbs were gathered and per-
fected and enlarged, this at a time when Rome was but
an infant city and the Greeks were setting out for Sicily.
To that unusual characteristic of the race to which allusion
elsewhere has been made, and which turns so frequently
its disasters to its advantage, is due the written form of
the complete Book as we have it today; for this came into
being in what Mr. Wells calls, "the stimulating atmos-
phere of the Babylonian world," during the captivity of
the Jews in the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar. They lost
their freedom and wealth, yet were able to give to man-

THE JEW IN LITERATURE 137

kind more than they had ever done, and gained, moreover,
a pre-eminent prestige by their literature to which they
now turned.

But here it seems to me that Mr. Wells, like many
another, though certainly not with a will to do so, has
moved into a groove which numerous predecessors have
worn rather deep ; for he is of the opinion that the Jewish
scribes in Babylon, where, however, men of their race had
been living in scattered captive groups from a much
earlier period than this of the second captivity, "probably"
incorporated in their writings the Babylonian stories of
the Creation and of the Flood, and even that of Moses
in the bulrushes. Mr. Wells may be right. He is safe
from being proved wrong at this late day, as are all who
undertake to establish history on their own supposition.
It is, however, regrettable that "probabilities" are so
often advanced by historians when no other means are at
hand to support their preferred theories. Conjectures on
what mental actions and re-actions took place twenty-five
hundred years ago in the remote East are but sorry fictions
to hang upon the few known facts. These "probabilities"
lend substance to Napoleon's theory that, after all, history
is but a fable agreed upon.

It is scarcely likely, Mr. Wells' suppositions to the
contrary notwithstanding, that a captive people would em-
ploy their leisure in appropriating their captor's traditions
and much more probable that the Babylonian kings, boast-
ful to the point of being comical to us, triumphing after
centuries of warring over the Jews, whose kings, reign
after reign from the time of David, had been so envied,
and whose racial pride was well recognized even in that
early day, may have gloried in their own power to take
over some of those same proud traditions ; to claim them.
Being victors, they had no reason to refrain from doing
this, if they wished to; and, as we read their unblushing

138 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

boasting, as deciphered from the tablets unearthed at old
Chaldea three-quarters of a century ago, the thought more
than once presents itself of the contrast between the
reverent spirit of the Hebrew records, and the bombastic,
theatrical form which the Babylonian braggarts employed.

However, we cannot doubt that in that age, as in
our own, there was a good deal of give and take among
those little neighboring, primitive peoples. In all proba-
bility (if we, too, may indulge in probabilities) the natural
bent for writing which has continued to be the characteris-
tic of the Jews, was utilized by their Babylonian captors,
as it was by the Church in our own era, and that the Jews
did much transcribing for them. It is conceivable, for it
brought this about in Christendom, that this ability
secured favors for them which softened the rigors of their
captivity, and raised them in public esteem.

While they were still captive, while they were begin-
ning to set down their traditions in Babylon, it may be
recalled that a great change was operating in the then
known world, about and beyond them. Evidence from
every side appears to establish a sudden and universally
experienced quickening of moral consciousness. In the
East, Buddha came into view, and Confucius was preach-
ing. It would seem evident from the researches of
archaeologists, that, with these indications of an active
spiritual awakening on all sides, the arising would be im-
possible of such a statement, for example, as that advanced
with such infuriate dogmatism by Mr. Chamberlain,
namely: that the "J ews took" their monotheistic theories
from the Indo-Aryans, and their legends from the Chal-
deans. This subject, thanks to the flinging about of such
assumptions, to their being caught up and speculated upon
by others, is one that might well use up the rest of our
available space; we must return, however, to our own
of the Jew in literature as he begins his participation in

THE JEW IN LITERATURE 139

that first literary period, and gathers his material for the
Hebrew Scriptures which a world was to inherit.

One of the earliest literary figures we come upon
after the greater prophets, and his portrait and biography
are amazingly well-drawn, though in pale tones in the
Scriptures themselves, is that of Baruch, disciple and
secretary of Jeremiah, who transcribed his master's
thoughts as he uttered them, and, it may well be, embel-
lished them. He was with the Prophet through most of
his travels, devoted to his interests, and zealously eager
to be identified with him as Joshua was with Moses; as
Elisha was with Elijah. Though in the Bible he is found
among the throng rather than in the foreground, Josephus
gives him more prominence, and the Talmud and other
authorities to the present day place him among the minor
prophets. There even hangs about Baruch's story the'
possibility of his being raised some day to a still higher
rank.

Along in years when Cyrus liberated the Jews who
had been fifty years captive in Babylonia, Baruch pre-
ferred to remain in that land of study under so enlightened
a ruler, to returning to Jerusalem. So, too, did others
of his race; and he appears to have acted as teacher to
many, among them Ezra, of an old and important lineage,
whose mind he, no doubt, had part in forming. Ezra was
a grandson of the High Priest Hilkiah, who found the
Scroll of the Law in the Temple. Baruch's lineage, too,
was noble. When the two came together, as teacher and
disciple, Baruch was already a venerable figure, but was
still profoundly engaged upon the study of the Law, and
the manuscripts of the Book of Jeremiah; perhaps upon
those works of his own which later caused him to be
numbered among the lesser prophets. He made the study
of the Law so fascinating to Ezra that, while he lived,

140 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

that severe young prophet preferred to continue with him
to going- back to Jerusalem.

An interesting feature of the study of the early world
literature, especially at this period, is that nowhere in the
product of the many Jewish writers who left behind them
notable manuscripts, is there to be found mention of the
literary figures of the other near-lying and great peoples
of the times, and, similarly, no mention of the Jewish
authors in the works of the authors of the Greeks and
other nations. Sophocles and Socrates came and went in
the outside world while the great literary activity that
produced the Scriptures was going on among the Jews in
B-abylon. Herodotus, the "father of history/' was attain-
ing fame as an observing traveller ; but from such remains
of the time as have come down to us we can only form
one opinion: that every little human group looked upon
every other human group as little more than curious
heathen. A national self-satisfaction was common to
them all, as great as that exhibited today, by our modern
nations.

Many myths concerning this Jewish bookman,
Baruch, grew up after his death and burial in Arabia,
where for centuries, his grave was the goal of pilgrims.
There came a time, so a legend says, when the king of the
country, having heard of miraculous happenings at the
spot, decided to have the matter looked into and ordered
the grave to be opened. But as his men proceeded to the
task, all who touched it fell dead. The king, not to be
balked in his determination, at last ordered the Jews them-
selves to open the grave : which, after fasting and prayer,
they were able to accomplish. The story is that the body
of Baruch was perfectly preserved in a marble coffin, and
that the king shortly afterward became a Jew and trans-
ferred the body to its present resting place, a mile away
from that of EzekiaL

THE JEW IN LITERATURE 141

For centuries it was said that gold dust lay upon the
leaves of a plant that grew over this grave. Later the
Arabians identify Baruch with Zoroaster, and so, little by
little the myths have gathered about him until he is, to
most people, an altogether unreal character. But he
wrote a book, or one that has been ascribed to him which
was for centuries preserved in the Greek, the Syriac, and
the Slavonic, and has only within thirty years become
known to Western readers through a translation from the
Slavonic (and that from the Greek text) which issued
through the Cambridge press. The great quality that
distinguishes the literature of the Jews is its living inter-
est, which has held the attention of humanity for thou-
sands of years, generation after generation, Baruch,
today, may be said to be only now "coming into his own."

We are told that the literary men of Judah were busy
upon the compilation and perfecting of their work upon
the Scriptures down to 100 B. C, and that at once, upon
its completion, they began to form their "Blackstone," or
Talmud, or, as it is known, their book of interpretations
of the laws as rendered by notable teachers of the race.
Their laws, then and today, had and have a greater effect
upon their life than any other of their literature. In this
writing upon writings, however, in this building upon the
original Scriptures, they have set an example that every
succeeding school of theology has followed. The most
incredible masses of theological literature, as a conse-
quence, have been poured out upon the world. Plato was
writing co-incidentally with the compilers and editors of
the Scriptures and upon what he wrote many volumes have
since been written; but they are as nothing in comparison
with the incalculable writing that has been done in
explanation, or defence of, or in comment upon "the
Book."

144 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

none the less, as the first notable secular writer to come
from his people.

Though it was now beginning to decline in impor-
tance, Alexandria for two centuries had been the great
meeting-place of the peoples of the world. Its population
was as cosmopolitan as that of New York today, and,
too, in its day, it was the largest Jewish city in the world,
not excepting Jerusalem, as is said of the great western
metropolis at the present time. Here Jews spoke Greek,
the common language of the community, and had their
beloved Scriptures translated into that tongue, the better
to hold their own among the controversialists of the time.
Philo drank at many philosophical springs in Alexandria
and while retaining his love for his ancestral faith, he
began to develop that philosophy which afterward became
known as "Philonism." It sought, as its main purpose,
the reconciliation of the religions of his day, especially
that of the Jews, with the Greek and the Indo-Aryan
theories. He seems amazingly modern, as one looks back
upon that active time of nearly two thousand years ago;
for today all thoughtful minds are again turned toward
the solving of practically the same problems which he
tried to settle.

Greek, Indo-Aryan, and Jewish thought were con-
stantly debated in Alexandria. It is said that philosophi-
cal ambassadors from Indian potentates had sojourned in
the city, where the first university had been established,
and where the most advanced intellects of that period
spent their force upon discussions of the diverse God-
concepts which existed among the peoples of the world.
Greek and Roman, and Indian expounded his own faith
and the beauties it contained, and Philo, in turn took up
the beauties of Judaism and expatiated upon the wonders
of his Scriptures. He stands out among the men of his
time, a peace-making preacher endeavoring to prove that

THE JEW IN LITERATURE 145

the Jewish prophets and the philosophic speculators of
Greece, and the dreamers, as well of the East, were striv-
ing, after all, for the one truth, however different the
outer appearance of their methods of approach.

It appears, however, that many of Philo's ideas,
which were later taken on by the young Christian sect, and
by the Church as it developed, were rejected by the Jewish
theologians of the time, as being Platonian; often, indeed
in the spirit less of Jewish than of Greek thought, with
perhaps a coloring here and there of other prevailing
schools of philosophy, and of those of preceding periods*
Philo would be better described, however, as an early
eclectic thinker, scholastic in his methods, and withal an
early stylist. He is said to have modelled his language
upon a close study of works that were already classics in
his day. A native Greek, in spirit, too, he has been pro-
nounced thoroughly Hellenic; but in faith he was a Jew
of Jews.

Critics speak of Philo's Greek as being mixed with
Hebraisms and they note that among his writing one
may come unexpectedly upon whole phrases which had
been formed previously by other authors; but there is no
reason to deduce from this a desire to plagiarize, for one
of the points for which his works have been valued
especially are the liberal quotations from other authors
even then obsolete, but which have been of the utmost
service to those who came after him. Such works by
Philo as have been preserved, largely by the Church
Fathers, consist of Commentaries on the Law, and frag-
ments from other works which Ambrosius and other early
writers have incorporated in their texts. It is known that
he wrote biographies of many of the Jewish patriarchs,
using them as demonstrations of "the active law of
virtue;" also a notable work, "De Vita Contemplative^"
said to have contained remarkable pictures of a colony of

146 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

Jewish hermits who spent six out of every seven days in
pious contemplation and study of the Scriptures. There
has been a vast amount of pseudo-Philonic literature,
which, in itself, is testimony to the important place Philo
occupies in ancient writings. Charles Foster Kent says
of him that "his work became epoch-making in its in-
fluence upon Jewish haggada, Christian dogma, and Greek
philosophy."

Flavius Josephus came into the world but a year or
two before Philo passed out (in 40 A. D.), and lived on
into the next century, having looked upon the scattering
of his people, also the mutations of life, from many angles.
Descended from the Maccabees, a brilliant general, man
of the world, the favorite of Vespasian and therefore
envied by Tacitus ; a natural diplomat, he was not always
approved by the Jews themselves, yet he served them well;
for he not only wrote his great "Antiquities of the Jews"
and his equally notable "Wars of the Jews" but also his
immortal defense against Apion, who was the Ford or
Belloc of his day, as Tacitus was the Chamberlain, and
the originator, as has been pointed out elsewhere, of many
of the charges which have been but recently revived.

Nothing that has come down to us from the race,
aside from the Scriptures, is at once so simple, so graphic,
or so fascinating to the world at large as these stories
from the pen of Josephus. He has been criticised as
having written wholly "from the Jewish point of view,"
and praised for having done nothing of the kind. The
first named critics prove their point by picking out what
they regard as a misunderstanding on the part of Josephus
of certain non- Jewish terms ; but the examples given of his
short-comings in this respect reduce these critics to the
position of merest quibblers, of which so many examples
may be found among critical writers. The fact is that
Josephus left behind him, in these histories of the Jews,

THE JEW IN LITERATURE 147

both picturesque and absorbing accounts of his people,
which rank in the minds of those who read them today
with those other fascinating stories of the ancients,
Plutarch's Lives. As a whole, they are probably as
accurate. They have kept Jewish secular writings on the
everyday bookshelves as no other work from the race has
done or could do, for now nearly two thousand years.

Written originally in Greek, both the "WarJ* and the
"Antiquities" have been translated into Syriac, and Latin,
many times into German and French; into Hungarian,
and the Oriental tongues, and into English by R. Traill
and William Whiston. All along the centuries great
minds have paid tribute to Josephus. Joseph Scaliger, a
Paduan scholar of the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries was one
of the earliest to recognize him in Europe. He said that
not only in the affairs of the Jews, but in those even of
foreign nations, Josephus deserves more credit than all of
the Greek and Roman writers put together. "Certain it
is," wrote Bishop Porteus, after quoting Scaliger, "that
he had the most essential qualification for the historian
a perfect knowledge of the transactions which he relates;
that he had no prejudices to mislead him in the representa-
tion of them; and that, above all, ... he probably con-
tinued a zealous Jew all his life/' The work of Flavius
Josephus possesses the strength of simplicity which was so
characteristic of the early Jewish writers, and though an
old man when he wrote most of it, his spirit is dauntless,
and marvellously virile in its fire and fearlessness ; in its
power to grip and rouse the reader to sympathy with him.

After Josephus, however, Jewish literary product,
like that of the rising Christian sect, seems almost wholly
to have consisted of theological matter or of speculative
philosophy, until well into the period of the Renaissance.
Some fourteen commentaries upon the Talmudic writings
and the Law, and upon varying phases of Judaism had been

148 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

written to the time of Maimonides. Many of these had
arisen in the East from among the scholars who were
identified with the school at Sora. R. H. Charles, speak-
ing of the great Rabbinical writings of the early dis-
cursive and critical Jewish authors of the present era, says
without an acquaintance with them the New Testament
cannot be understood ; and this opinion has been re-stated
by T. K. Cheyne and R. T. Herford, all of which authori-
ties are able to note an almost daily increase in the interest
in the post-Biblical writing of the Jews. These gentle-
men very recently have maintained that an acquaintance
with the Talmud, with its theories of religion and its
"excursions into the land of fancy" is become an essential
to those who would be thought cultured.

One of the most notable literary figures of the tenth
century, of any race, is that of Saadiah, who is known also
under his Eastern name of Sa-id al Fayyumi, who has
been named as the founder of scientific activity among his
people. He completed a Hebrew dictionary in 913 A. D.,
a great work, besides engaging in polemical writings that
have become historic. Head of the school at Sora, he
ranks, after Philo, as the "great writer of post-Biblical
Judaism." But it is said that while Philo's thought was
colored by his Greek surroundings, so Saadiah's show here
and there the color of his Mohammedan environment.
His worth to the modern world of scholars may be gauged
by the fact that in 1892 a movement was started for the
celebration of the thousandth anniversary of his birth by
the bringing out of a complete edition of his works.
These were many and various. Saadiah translated the
Hebrew Pentateuch, or, the Law, into Arabic. From 1546
to the present day, this scholar has been the delight of the
erudite, who have kept him alive by continual discussion
of his works. Practically every learned theological work

THE JEW IN LITERATURE 149

of the present day which includes a tracing and verifica-
tion of philosophy, cites this Jewish teacher.

The Vatican contains many records of the Jewish
writings of those days, so obscure as they seem to the
unscholastic mind; among them the martial and memorial
poems of Michael Cohen, many of whose pupils rose high
in letters; those of Meir of Norwich, who flourished in
England about 1260.

The most celebrated traveller of the twelfth century
was Benjamin of Tudela, who was the Herodotus of his
day, though he exceeded the Greek in the accuracy of his
observations. Castro, in his Biblioteca Espanola, says
that Benjamin's work had been done into every language
in Europe and had (at that writing) passed through six-
teen editions. Castro, who "did for the Hebrew literature
what a preceding author, Casira, had done for that of the
Arabs, gave more than seven hundred excerpts from the
choice writings of the Jews of Spain, together with bio-
graphical sketches of their authors/' which show an
amazing erudition and talent among them.

Prescott is authority for the statement, in his "Ferdi-
nand and Isabella/' that the Jews, "in the cultivation of
elegant letters revived the glories of the Hebrew Muse.
This," he continues, "was indeed the golden age of modern
Jewish literature, which, under the Spanish Caliphs, had
experienced a protection so benign, although occasionally
chequered by the caprices of despotism, that it was enabled
to attain a higher beauty and a more perfect development
in the tenth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries than
it has reached in any other part of Christendom." . . .

Benjamin of Tudela, whose records show him to have
been a man of the highest associations, left Saragossa
about 1160, travelled through Greece and Turkey;
through Egypt, Italy, Germany and France, lingering
long in each country, and writing there his observations.

ISO THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

He left invaluable pictures of the world of his day. He
returned to Castile only after thirteen years of wandering.
Twenty-five editions of his work are known, and these
in all the modern European tongues; also in Latin. A
copy of his "Itinerary" is in every National Museum of
Europe. At least a half dozen of the best known editions
are in Dutch.

A great Jewish author of this period, Ibn Gabirol,
whose work is familiar to many when listed under his
author-name, Avicebron, has been called "unique and the
most noble of philosophers." His* works are among the
treasures of the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris. That
most familiar to the world is his "Improvement of the
Moral Qualities/' which, as an ethical treatise, was edited
and published by the Rev. Stephen S. Wise in New York
in 1902. But Gabirol was also a poet, and writer "of
metric songs," some of which are used today in the
religious services of the Jews. Critics have said of him
that he liberated Hebrew poetry from involved expression,
and that in him the liturgical writings and poetry of the
Spanish and the Arabian Jews attained their highest per-
fection. Late appraisers of his work have called him
"the Jewish Plato." Literary connoisseurs, and true
amateurs, notwithstanding Mr. Belloc's pronunciamento,
are today, as they have not been in centuries, eagerly
perusing this reviving literature. We may not linger
over its many great names, since there is as much to tell
of in the story of the Jew in what may be called modern
literature.

CHAPTER VIII
The Jew in Modern Literature

"In their intense, vibrant and infinitely varied
literary expression, the latter-day Jewish writers are
not excelled by any other race. They rank well as
novelists: as dramatists; they are among our best
critics, our most virile polemical authors, our jour-
nalists. Keen in satire, brilliant in repartee, they often
display an ebulliency like to nothing but the vigor of
young springs; in their lighter works, to the brittiancy
of the sun-touched spray of fountains"

1 A, S.

MODERN literature properly begins only with the
age of printing. But that age liberated literature
in all the known languages and fixed immortal works in a
form for the use of countless centuries to follow. Most
of the Jewish works which this magical invention made
available, like most of the non-Jewish writings that were
similarly now at the disposal of the world, had to do with
theological theory or controversy. One of the first Hebrew
works to be 1 printed was Maimonides' "Guide for the
Perplexed", a work which, in the course of its history had
been burned in the public Square, condemned alike by Jews
and Churchmen as heretical, but which became a text-book
for philosophers for centuries thereafter, and is still a
work of reference and held by scholars to be invaluable.
But Jewish literary output was not all of this serious
school. It has been rather clearly established that gaiety,
too, had its spokesmen among them though the lighter
literature of the race is often found to be fused with that
of the people among whom they dwelt. This is said to be
so in the case of the "Thousand and One Nights"
that delightful collection of Eastern stories which
first crept into popular European knowledge in the late
seventeenth century. Its composite authorship has always
been recognized, but in only a few instances conclusively

151

152 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

identified; but some one hundred-and-sixty-odd stories, in-
cluding that of Sinbad, have been pronounced unmistak-
ably Jewish' by many of their marked characteristics.

What goes far to establish this connection is that, as
we have seen, the Jews were well acquainted with the
realm and court of Haroun-al-Raschid, whose adventures
are told in the wonderful "Arabian Nights" collection.
These stories, "so rich, so poetic, so witty, what is more",
as Larousse puts it, "and so audacious in painting the
gilded slavery of the women of the Harem", have become,
as well, the synonym for all that is dazzling, magical,
luxurious and Oriental.

In secular literature the Jews have always had their
"children of fantasy and sorrow". Mingling with the de-
votional and semi-devotional Jewish poetry of the eleventh
century, are many gay wine songs ; many satirical rhymes,
many romantic ones, as well as love-songs. One drinking
song, famous among the relics of that period is a satire
directed against an inn-keeper who charged outrageous
prices for his wine, and, notwithstanding, watered it. The
theme is by no means outworn in the present day, and the
ditty is not unlike similar ones that remain from the Eng-
lish output of the same century.

There was a Jewish poet in the thirteenth century,
Immanuel of Rome, who combined "the warm imagination
of the Orient with the erotic spirit then rife in Italy" and
gave reign to it, probably, being human, in a derisive chal-
lenge to those who were inclined to sneer at Jews as hyper-
moralists. But he paid for his audacity; for his writings
were denounced by the Rabbis who forbade their people to
read them. At the same time, ImmanueFs worth was such
that as his work became known he acquired the name of
"the Jewish Dante."

A member of a wealthy family, this poet appears to
have been active in the city life and to have left a mass of

THE JEW IN MODERN LITERATURE 153

manuscripts behind him. Like all his race he was a wide
reader; and he freely used as the subject of his verse the
Hebrew writings with which he was most familiar. He
wrote in Hebrew and fluently, in Italian. Scholars say he
mingled Hebrew idioms with the modern tongue which
lent a special charm to it His writing in Italian would
explain his recognition in his own times. He is said to
have been an innovator in his Hebrew verse, in that he
was able successfully to introduce the sonnet form of Spain
into that language, even improving upon it by the intro-
duction of alternating rhyme.

But he was an inveterate satirist, and merciless in his
parodies on Talmudic and Biblical stories. These he filled
with jests and puns and ridicule of customs very dear to
the Jewish heart, and which the leaders of the race openly
rebuked him for. In his riper years he was about sixty
at the time he wrote a "Vision of Hell and Paradise 3 ',
which many have spoken of in the same breath with the
"Divina Commedia"; but, while this work was said to be
on an expiatory character, and to record his repentance for
some of his earlier shocking lightmindedness ; to be per-
meated, too, by a consciousness of sin, nevertheless the old
bent toward mischievous gaiety and to poke fun at what
he thought outworn and illogical, breaks from him from
time to time. In more than one characteristic he would
appear to be the literary progenitor of Heinrich Heine.

Immanuers "Dantesque" work was published in 1491
at Brescia, one hundred and sixty years after its author
had passed away; again at Constantinople in 1535, in Ber-
lin in 1796 and at Lemberg in 1870 ; and, while it has been
condemned for its frivolous, even its wanton passages,
nevertheless it continues to be regarded with the greatest
interest, and to be prized as a relic of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries' literature. It should be remem-
bered that this author wrote in the spirit of his age, and

154 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

was, in his way, a pioneer in a field which Boccaccio filled
fifty years later, and Rabelais succeeded to after one hun-
dred and sixty years ; that his work was written, moreover,
in Hebrew in which it long lay untranslated. Because of
this, while scholars have given him a high rating, the
unlearned in the literature of that age have passed him by
as negligible; but from present interest in his work, Im-
manuel's fame may yet rise in the modern world. Voltaire
said of Dante, the beloved of his nation: "The Italians
call him divine; but it is a hidden divinity. Few people
understood his oracles. He has commentators which, per-
haps, is another reason for his not being understood.
His reputation will go on increasing because scarcely any-
body reads him/' To the present Immanuel has had no
commentators.

Italy for several centuries continued to be a mother-
land of many generations of famous Hebrew scholars,
among them the Luzzati whence several literary men of
note sprang. The Rabbis of Italy were indefatigable
writers on theological subjects during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries as were also those of Amsterdam,
and Holland, generally. There is little to note during
these years of a general literary output among the Jews.
The thought of the world was upon religious controver-
sies; upon the struggle, as someone has said, between faith
and philosophy. Out of that struggle the great figure that
stands above all others is that of Baruch Spinoza, of the
great comprehending spirit; a light-bringer to the world
of whom we shall have further to say elsewhere. Moses
Mendelssohn, who wrought such an inconceivably great
change into the life of his people, began his work in the
eighteenth century. He wrote continually and early in life
distinguished himself by capturing a prize in a literary
contest for which Kant was a competitor. His subject

THE JEW IN MODERN LITERATURE 155

was "Are Metaphysics susceptible of Mathematical Dem-
onstration?"

His friendship with the dramatist, Lessing, and many
other non- Jewish literary men of his time, proved a key
to the unlocking of the world to Jewish endeavor. He may
be said to have set fire to the intellects of his race. Fol-
lowing Mendelssohn came a great increasing army of Jew-
ish strugglers for political freedom; but even before him,
the liberation of minds had begun from traditions still to
be loved and cherished, but which were henceforth to be
made useful to them as a people, rather than detrimental in
their contact with the world. Enthusiasts for their people
rose up all over Europe. It was the old effort of Philo to
reconcile the ancient Laws with the evolution of human
thought; but, in the eighteenth century not one but many
hundreds were in the struggle and these had printing
presses at their command. Moreover, the peoples about
them were all in a locked struggle against class rule. The
colonists in America, the peasants and working-classes in
France, were all in the throes of a vital protest

To the support of Mendelssohn writers appeared all
over Europe; and while these were largely passionate pro-
testors against the limitation of human rights, and their
cries seem to us, today, like a confused medley both
in purpose and appeal, yet it was, also, the chaos out
of which a real renaissance of Jewish literature was to
arise. Suddenly the race began to speak in strange tongues,
to write in them, what was even more significant; for it
brought the Jews into a harmony with the outer world
which to that time they had not known ; a better understand-
ing of that world and of themselves, and it taught them to
raise their bent heads and to walk erect. Now, early in
the last century, the propensity of the race to write began
to express itself in departments of literature which, pre-
viously, had seemed to be closed to them. The young

156 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

among them took to general literature; to the writing of
romances, and lighter verse. Having acquainted themselves
with the fiction of the world at large, they began to trans-
late French, English, German master-works into Hebrew
and into Judischer-German, which is now known as Yid-
dish. While their scholars still leaned to "heavy" and
controversial writing, Mapu, one of the race devised the
first Jewish novel form. Within three-quarters of a cen-
tury a great man of their people was, if not the leading
English novelist, at least among the world leaders in this
field; one who ranks as the creator of the political novel.

Disraeli, or, as he was later to become, Lord Beacons-
field, was a Jew who shed a peculiarly exalted glory upon
his race; in connection with which the words of W. W.
Davies, in a recent Hibbert Journal article come insistently
to mind : "Democracy must be taught to behave itself de-
cently/' if peace is to prevail in civilized communities ; if
we are to have harmony among the family of nations. For
how may it be attained if the authors who, Carlisle so
truthfully has said, are the real priests of humanity, per-
sist so unblushingly in propagating their personal racial
dislikes by means of disingenuous thrusts at the Jews under
circumstances which furnish, of themselves, neither basis
nor warrant for them? in ways, when all is said and
done, which are opened up solely for the purpose of this
ill-doing?

The great majority today read these splenetic out-
bursts without either weighing or discriminating, which,
as Lord Bryce has said, "makes them a much greater dan-
ger to the world, than were their illiterate ancestors, for
they are much more liable to be misled". And there is
scarcely anything to wonder at in their being misled, when
one considers the confidence with which little living men
fall upon the remains of dead great ones, with such un-
veiled determination to make the evil or the weakness,

THE JEW IN MODERN LITERATURE 157

the little human vanities even, which they once displayed,
to live after them, while they leave the good unnoticed,
to be "interred with their bones 35 *

These thoughts arise, inevitably, upon laying down,
let us say, an essay by Edmond Scherer, on a work of
Disraeli. It is peppered all over, apropos of nothing,
with references to that author's race; to his racial peculiar-
ities. But take them up, one by one, with a predetermina-
tion to be fair minded and what do you find? That in
each and every case the features complained of are not
merely "Jewish" but human characteristics; Disraeli was
a dandy in a day when dandyism was the fashionable fad ;
when non- Jewish dandies were aped and petted by the
fashionable. Brummel was quoted as the pattern on which
a D'Orsay might be made. Those dandies perfumed them-
selves and bedecked their fingers with rings, and idled
through life leaving behind them only the amusing record
of wasted lives, and a load of debts which might or might
not ever be settled. Not being Jews, they come off with
allowances made for their weaknesses. Their memories are
even cherished as carefully as a bit of porcelain because of
their very frailty. Let a Jew depart from his air of in-
scrutable grief or gloom, from his enforced apart-ness, let
him betray his vanities and weaknesses; let him, being in
dandydom do as the dandies do, even though, besides, he
do mighty deeds, and his weaknesses are magnified to
obscure his greater parts, and decried as "Jewish traits".

That Disraeli was attacked in life is a tribute to his
greatness. Men in high places are subject to attacks ; but
that he should continue to be so, dying, and in death, and
on the score, primarily, of his race, is testimony not alone
to the littleness of the prejudiced mind, but to its cowardice
as well. Dead Jews, like dead Christians, are at the mercy
of any daws who choose to pick at them. Swift said,
truly: "We have just enough religion to make us hate,

158 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

but not enough to make us love each other", and therein
is contained the secret of the racial evils that beset the

world.

Scherer wrote of Disraeli as "a foreigner, a Jew who
raised himself from an attorney's office to the peerage of
England and to the headship of his country's government"
This is the sort of author who would write of an incom-
parable Illinoisan as indeed many have written "He was
a railsplitter, who raised himself to the presidency of a
great Republic."

Nor shall we be wasting time to linger for still another
moment to glance at the statement: "A foreigner, a Jew";
for these are terms they are the borrowed epithets which
have been applied of late to Jews in America of the second,
third, and even of the fifth and sixth generations. Just
what new significance has crept into the word that it
should be circulated and made to do such invidious service ?
A foreigner is a person born in another country. Disraeli
and his father before him were native-born Englishmen.
His grandfather was a naturalized subject of England.
He could not, therefore, be either a foreigner or an in-
truder, but only a true-born son of Britain in fact as he
was in act

Deep-seated prejudice caused M. Scherer, whom
we dwell upon as an example of the prejudiced attitude of
the literary critic of forty years ago, to see in the
premiership of Beaconsfield numerous other "Jewish char-
actertistics" calculated to reduce in the minds of future
readers his stature whether as statesman or author. As for
his literary output, Scherer repudiates Disraeli's charac-
tersthose in his novels, as "strangers to us", since they
are ambassadors and ministers, dukes and duchesses; but
this criticism does not hold good. Authors, we are told,
should write of what they know best; not of what some-
one else knows best. Disraeli lived among the class

THE JEW IN MODERN LITERATURE 159

of which he wrote. He wrote of a class among whom he
dwelt for the greater part of his life; of a class with whom
his critic certainly had no acquaintance, and from the
standpoint of a mind which was capable of directing the
greatest political events of the greatest empire of his time.

Disraeli was twenty-two when his first novel, Vivian
Grey was published. Lady Blessington, travelling on the
Continent read it and wrote of it that "it is a wild but
clever book, full of genius in its unpruned luxuriance.
The writer revels," she says, "in all the riches of a brilliant
imagination and expends them prodigally, dazzling at one
moment by his passionate eloquence and at another by his
touching pathos." Walter Scott was less impressed. He
called the work an "odd" one, and clever, but not suffi-
ciently so to urge him to the effort of going upstairs on a
sultry day to get the second volume! The book, published
anonymously at first, met with a conservative approval as
it was commonly supposed to be the work of a known
diplomat; but, Monypenny says, in his recent life of
Disraeli, that when it transpired that the author was
only an audacious boy, it was promptly denounced as mere
"puffery".

We cannot here follow Disraeli as he mounts the lad-
der as a literary man, raved over by one set, set upon by
another. Of great literary importance to his race, he
pressed on from book to book in a field of literature until
then unassociated with the Jews, and rose to become and
to remain, to the present, a great Jewish author and a high
peak man in English letters. Much of his life reads like
a romance. Monypenny says that Peel and Stanley's suc-
cessful effort to keep him out of office at a time when his
political aspirations were greater than his literary ambi-
tions, deserves the gratitude of English lovers of litera-
ture; for in the retirement to which defeat forced him for
a time, he originated the political novel, producing "Con-

160 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

ingsby" and "Sybil". These were destined to continue his
reputation, to increase it; to carry it down to the present
in the company of the most brilliant literary workers of
his century.

Writing to Edward Bulwer Lytton, Disraeli spoke of
his own nature as being "naturally somewhat indolent and
melancholy" ; but to others it seemed phenominally active,
and alert with nervous energy, and his eye fixed steadily
upon a great goal Some of the racial energy, perhaps it
was, that was wakening the Jewish people all over the
European world as he began life.

About the time when Vivian Grey was the topic of
the hour in London, another Jewish figure that was to
leave its impress on nineteenth century literature, left Ger-
many to take up his residence in Paris.

In Russell's literary notes there is painted this picture
of Heine, "to whom/' a poet has said, "poetry was a play-
thing" ; whose career is at once so brilliant and so pathetic.
"For several years preceding Heine's death, he was a mis-
erable paralytic. All that time he lay upon a pile of mat-
tresses, racked by pain and exhausted by sleeplessness,
till his body was reduced below all natural dimensions,
and his long beard fell over the coverlid like swan's down,
or a baby's hair. His muscular debility was such that he
had to raise his eyelid as best he could with his hand when
he wished to see the face of anybody about him. Thus,
in darkness, he thought and listened and dictated, preserv-
ing to the very last his precision of diction and his invinci-
ble humor."

Heine was a poet whom poets love. "The magic of
Heine's poetical form" wrote Matthew Arnold, "is an
incomparable . . . blend of French modernism and
German sentiment and fullness" ; but, he adds "No account
of Heine is complete that does not take notice of the Jew-
ish element in him. He treated his race with the same

THE JEW IN MODERN LITERATURE 161

freedom with which he treated everything- else; but he
derived a great force from it, and no one knew this better
than he. But he saw his race, as he saw the world, often,
from its comic side." Withal, Arnold thinks him an in-
adequate interpreter of the modern world. Nevertheless,
he found in the poet's head "all the ideas o modern Europe
were fermenting", and he sums him up as the most im-
portant successor to Goethe in Goethe's most important
line of activity; as "a soldier for the liberation of human-
ity."

"He died," Arnold says, "and left a blemished name"
and he instances in detail, Heine's shortcomings. Surely,
he had them, in plenty, but how could it be otherwise?
One of his earliest teachers is recorded solely because of
his zeal in trying "to cuff religion into him". It follows
quite naturally that he cuffed it out. Then, too, it must
be remembered, Heine's mutinous life ripened at a period
when all Europe was mutinous. The literature of his
times was all decadent. Even Balzac who, by common
consent ranks so high, wrote in glee his Conies Drolatiques,
in an attempt to outdo Rabelais. Byron and his school
were still the talk of the gay world. Georges Sand, in
her "Histoire de ma Vie", has told some plain truths of the
profligate character of the literary thought of her time,
which was also Heine's. The poet's "mutiny" but for
that cuffing by the "enlightened", might have spoken in a
very different key; but, such as it was, it was in accord
with the spirit of his times if uttered in his own charac-
teristic cadences.

The poet Stedtnan found in Heine a natural successor
to Byron. "He begins", says the critic, "where Byron left
off. His whole song . . . was full of restless changes
from tears and laughter, from melody and love and ten-
derness to scorn and cynicism and again from agnosticism
to faith. In youth, and at intervals until his death, his

162 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

dominant key was like Byron's dissatisfaction, longing,
the pursuit of an illusive ideal, the love of love, and of
fame." How free this master critic is from the smallness
and racial prejudices which have distinguished so many
others! He judged as a man and a brother. Let us go
with him farther.

"Heine", he continues, "was many beings in one; a
Jew by race, a German by birth, a Parisian by adoption,
taste, and instinct for the beautiful, his outlook was
broader than that of the English poet;" but "his writing
was also a revolt . . . against the age, against con-
temporary Philistinism; . . . Byron became a cos-
mopolitan; Heine was born one. In the world's theatre
he stood behind the scenes of the motley human drama*
He wrought its plaint and laughter into a fantastic music
of his own with a genius both sorrowful and sardonic;
always like one enduring life as a penance, and suffering
from the acute consciousness of some finer existence, the
clue to which was denied him." . . ,

Heine felt and often avowed that the actual song-
motive is a heart wound without which "the poet cannot
sing his sweetliest". He mocked, and younger poets mis-
took it for gaiety, and, as if they, too, meant it, and felt it,
they imitated it "without perceiving it to be neither sane
art nor true mirth." But Heine himself, who wrote of the
man, "whose nerves, like chords of lightning brought
fire to his brain," to whom a whisper was a wound, a look
or sneer, a blow; and who, as a consequence, felt "more
pangs, in years, or months, than dunce-thronged ages
know," wrote from personal experience.

In the careless days of his young manhood Heine
changed his faith, at least outwardly embracing what was
a newer and more popular one in the circles in which he
felt he must win his way. It had been impossible to cuff
religion onto him; but for policy's sake, and to overcome

THE JEW IN MODERN LITERATURE 163

obstacles (of prejudice) that lay in his way, he assumed
that virtue, though he had it not, and no doubt railed at
old faiths and new as he did so. Bacon, however, has
truly said that "a little philosophy inclineth a man's mind
to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds
about to religion". So it was with Heine, who ripened in
the university of pain, of dis-illusion, wrote as the world
receded, his real views of his ancestral faith, and people.

"I have never spoken with sufficient reverence of
them", he penned, "and that, of a truth, because of my
Hellenic temperament, which was opposed to Jewish asceti-
cism. My preference for Hellenism has since decreased.
I see now that the Greeks were merely handsome strip-
lings. The Jews, however, have always been men . . .
even at the present day in spite of eighteen hundred years
of persecution and wretchedness. I have, since then
learned to value them better, and if every kind of pride
of birth were not a foolish contradiction in a champion of
revolution and democratic principles, the writer of these
pages might be proud that his ancestors belonged to the
noble House of Israel; that he is a descendant of those
martyrs who have given to the world one God and the
moral law, and have fought and suffered in all the battle-
fields of thought." And they say his cry at last was:
"Judaism is not a religion; it is a misfortune!"

It proved so to Heine, even after death; even so late
as 1897, when admirers of his work raised money for a
memorial for him which, it was planned, was to have been
placed in his birth-place in Germany. Permission to do so
however, was refused by the Government The memorial
stands in the city of New York, instead, where, at 161st
Street and Mott Avenue, it is passed by thousands each
day*

Many brilliant young literary men of his own race
frequented the Heine circle in Paris, in the first half of

164 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

the last century, with whose names contemporary Europe
was familiar, for they were in the very front of the army
of controversialists who strove through the decades that
led up to the eventful year of 1848 to solve the complex
social problems of the times. One of the foremost of
these was Karl Ludwig Borne who sleeps in Pere la Chaise,
and whose birth-place in Germany was long marked by a
tablet commemorating him. While he lived Borne' s ideas
were defended and controverted by opposing parties all
over Europe. When he died, the sculptor, David, wrought
a monument expressive of Borne's long-worked-for hope
of seeing Germany and France with hands locked in a
friendly clasp. This now stands over his grave, still to
make its mute appeal.

Alfred Mels was another of this circle, whose first
literary work in Paris was as aid to Alexander Dumas.
He was a constant wanderer to and from all the art cen-
tres of Europe, contributing to many of the foremost
periodicals of his day, and writing numerous plays. His
most famous work for the theatre, performed in 1872,
"Heine's lunge Leiden,' 3 is known to have been performed
over two thousand times. There were and have con-
tinued to be very active Jewish writers in Europe through-
out all the nineteenth century; poets, novelists, librettists,
among whom might be named Massarani, Lindau, Auer-
bach, Hartmann, Weill, Jung, Leon Gordon, and a host of
less original writers. All, however, took an active part
in the literary rousing of their people, for they translated
into Hebrew much of the popular literature of modern
peoples, so introducing to them the thoughts of the outer
world, and stimulating them to measure their strength,
presently, with the non- Jewish authors of the period.

Leon Gordon, who put practically the whole history
of the Jews into verse, was called the leading Jewish poet
of his time, and in Russia not only played a great part in

THE JEW IN MODERN LITERATURE 165

the political education of his race, but was the hero of very
exciting adventures. The leader and inspiration of "the
younger generation," he wrote a notable call to the people
of his race: "Awake, my people, to the life about you!"
meaning, to intellectual progress, and to the realities of
modern life. This brought attacks upon him from every
conservative Jewish quarter. They served, however, only
to stir him to satirical retorts, both in Hebrew and
Russian.

Gordon was exceedingly mettlesome ; but he had need
to be: for, an attempt having been made upon the life of
Czar Alexander II, his enemies conspired to get rid of
him by accusing him of having had a share in the crime.
Though he was shortly exonerated, and made "Honorary
Citizen" on the score of the services he had rendered in
extending a knowledge of science among the Jews, yet
the first results of the accusation was that he, his wife
and children were thrown into prison, where they were
confined for many weeks. Gordon has been described as
a powerful satirist, merciless in scarifying the fanatics
among his own people, but quick to take up the cudgels in
their defense when others attacked them.

In the first half of the nineteenth century every state
in Europe held a group of enthusiasts eager to participate
in the intellectual emancipation of their race. In the
larger cities of Russia in the early part and middle of last
century, the eager young Jewish men are said to have
hurried, in throngs, to the schools and universities, which,
for the time being, at least, were open to them. Hebrew
began to disappear as a common medium of speech, and
the younger generations to mingle in the general interests
of the communities about them. This great movement
among the Jews and for the Jews began in Italy and
Austria, but presently the centre of activity was changed
to Russia, which, afterward, especially in South Russia,

166 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

continued to be the active Jewish literary centre, until the
last twenty years. Latterly this centre has been perceptibly
moving toward America.

An outstanding figure in French literary life, Catulle
Mendes, rose at that period. A native Frenchman,
Mendes displayed a rich virtuosity in a succession of
mystical writings of a genuine art worth. He is, perhaps,
one of the most widely read among the dilettanti of all
modern French authors. His works, which are likely to
live among their own class, include ''Legends of Par-
nasse" "Moorish Nights/' "The Midnight Sun," and
"Hesperus" a strangely brilliant imaginative work in-
spired by his reading of Swedenborg.

Dr. Max Nordau, though an Austrian by birth, has
also been associated with literary Paris in the public
thought where most of his works have appeared. His
activities and status are too well known to require dwell-
ing upon. Like all his race, he is a force, not always a
systematic thinker or writer; but original in ideas. His
works, "Parisian Studies" "The Kremlin and the Alham-
bra" "Paris, Under the Third Republic" the "True Land
of Millions" "The Philosophy of History" created a
furore in French literary circles and have generally been
translated into other tongues, as have been his later works.

Georges Brandes, the Dean of the greater Jewish
writers of today, is a profound lover of and worker for
his own race. His outlook from his first appearance in
the literary world, has been especially broad, and his
philosophy, born of a deep study of Mill, Taine, and the
leading thinkers of his time, has been uttered with a grace
and color that stamp it with his admirable culture and
charm. He has contributed notable works to the litera-
ture of our time, among his latest being his study of
Poland and its people, a volume in which there crowd
many literary virtues; clarity, keen observation, color and

THE JEW IN MODERN LITERATURE 167

an augmenting interest in his story as it unfolds. It
covers periods of impressions extending from 1885 to
1900, revealing the home life of Poland, the literary
groups, and political ones, through a panorama of per-
fectly drawn pictures.

Brandes caught the public attention first in 1871 with
his "Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature"
which, with his succeeding work, "Danish Poets'' fixed
him as a permanent star among the world's literary men.
He has proclaimed himself an aristocrat, an aesthete; but
perhaps the best estimate of him was made by a contem-
porary who called him "the Insurrectionist par excellence,
who had given the world freedom to build upon, fresh
courage to breathe, and a light to lighten our way." Yet
this author, within the decade, and even then a venerable
figure, was prohibited from entering Russia to fulfill a
lecture engagement on the sole ground of his race.

Taken man for man, and work for work, it cannot
truthfully be said that Jewish literature is negligible, or
that it goes unread. The best energies of the race go
today, as they have always done, to the writing of books.
They are among the best known playwrights and novelists
of Europe and conspicuous in both classes as writers of
plays and novels of purpose. Arthur Schnitzler in Aus-
tria, and Henri Bernstein in Paris lead the race in the
field of drama. Bernstein's plays, "le Volew" "la Rafale"
"I'Assaut" etc., are in book form, as are most of the
voluminous works of Arthur Schnitzler. One of Schnitz-
ler's works, which dealt with racial antagonisms arising
in medical circles, "Professor Bernhardi" was the occasion
of great excitement in Vienna but a few years ago.

We need not say that the novelist, Zangwill, is the
ranking Jewish novelist of his own time. A delightful
word-painter, he is hailed and valued by the critical irre-
spective of race, as an author of the first quality, and

168 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

especially as the one who expresses, and makes it his
life's work to express his own race in his own times. His
" 'Children of the Ghetto" has been read by everyone who
keeps abreast of current literature. His race hail him
as "the Master, Israel Zangwill." Certainly he has
painted the inner soul of his people as none has done be-
fore him and the passionate zeal he has put into his
work has been a trumpet call equally to non-Jews whose
outlook is just, and who look to a better understanding of
our fellow-beings. To them he has "parted the poor garb
of the misunderstood dweller in the ghetto," revealing him
as a man and a brother.

Someone has called "The Dreamers of the Ghetto"
"a series of biographies of struggling souls/' A bit of
Zangwill's own aspirational soul may be quoted from his
proem to "Italian Fantasies"

"I, too, have crossed the Alps,' and Hannibal himself
had no such baggage of dreams and memories, such fife-
and-drum lyrics, such horns of ivory, such emblazoned
standards and streamed gonfalons, flying and fluttering,
such phalanxes of heroes, such visions of cities to spoil,
and riches to rifle . . . palace and temple, bust and
picture, tapestry and mosaic. My elephants, too, matched
his; my herds of mediaeval histories, grotesque as his
gargoyled beasts. Not without fire and vinegar have I
pierced my passage to these green pastures; f Ave Italia,
regina terrarumj' I cried, as I kissed the hem of thy blue
robe, starred with white cities.

"There are those who approach Italy by other por-
tals, but these be the true gates of heaven, these purple
peaks snow-flashing as they touch the stainless sky;
scarred and riven with ancient fires and young with jets
of living water. Nature's greatness prepares the heart
for man's glory. . . .

THE JEW IN MODERN LITERATURE 169

"I have stood by the tower that gave a smile to
Dante; and by the low-hung wall of Padua's university
whence Portia borrowed her plumes . . . and have left
a footprint on those wind-swept sands where Shelley's
mortal elements found their fit resolution in flame. I have
lain under Bocaccio's olives and caressed with my eye the
curve of the distant Duomo and the winding silver of the
Arno. Florence has shown me supreme earth-beauty,
Venice supreme water-beauty; and I have worshipped
Capri and Amalfi, offspring of the love-marriage of earth
and water . . . O, consecration of the purifying dawn,
O flame on the eastern altar, what cathedral rose-window
can replace thee? O trill of the lark soaring sunward, O
swaying of May boughs and opening of flower chalices,
what tinkling of bells and swinging of censors can bring
us nearer the divine Mystery? What are soul liturgies
but borrowed emotions grown cold in the passing and
staled by use !" . . .

Many sweet singers of Israel have written in the past
fifty years whose contributions have a fixed if minor place
among the literature of the world. Living members of
the race are striving, even now, for recognition in the
world of letters, and doing worthwhile work in every de-
partment of literature; but we may well rest here upon
the presentation given of the Jew in literature and turn
our thought to the work of the race in other departments
of human progress.

CHAPTER IX
The Jew in Art

"The Jew, so recent an arrival in the domain of art
already has spoken in fine work whether by brush or
chisel. He ranks high as a draughtsman and colorist,
and has seised, all at once, the implements of art and
handled them with a natural skill. Two centuries ago
none considered his potentiality in a field theretofore
foreign to him. Today the first fruits of the racial
genius in marble or on canvas, -fill the niches and adorn
the walls of the choicest galleries in the world/'

A. s.

MUCH capital has been made in the past, and con-
tinues to be made in the present by the unfriendly
of the fact that the Jew "appears to have no art history" ;
that they have "neither a past nor a present art status/'
Usually this assertion is added: that the race lacks art
sense. Contrasts are made between Judea, of whose
ancient architecture nothing remains but word-painting,
no art indications, pictorial or sculptured relic to attest
her rank, and Greece, "Mother of Arts and Eloquence,"
which has left so many priceless records in stone of her
past glories. Even such pottery as has been Identified as
Judean, is of such simple character that, at most, it con-
sists of a flat band of crude color about a vase which is
of unmistakeable Phoenician contour.

It is, of course, within the probabilities that some day
it will be discovered that all is not ancient that is worm-
eaten in the relics of other races, and it may be true, as a
modest member of the Jewish race has written, that early
Hebrews may have been deficient in form and color sense.
It cannot be, said truthfully, however, that the Jew of
today suffers from any such deficiency. His participation
in art, though belated, has been so brilliant; talent has
sprung up among them so vitally and from so many dif-

170

THE JEW IN ART 171

feting national groups, as to make argument as to their
lack in this field impossible, and also as to indicate as the
more logical explanation of their earlier art inactivity,
that the barrier that has separated them from it, has lain
in the orthodox attitude toward "the graven image or the
likeness of anything that is in the heavens above or in
the earth beneath/' etc.

The Art we know today came into the modern world
under the aegis of the ecclesiasts of the Middle Ages, who
regarded beauty, color, rhythm as conducive to the devo-
tional spirit. Though Mr, Chamberlain declares it sprang
wholly from Greek and Indo-Aryan inspiration, which he
regards as so much more lofty than Christian or Biblical
concepts, this would seem to be no more capable of being
substantiated than are certain other of this Germano-
phile's claims and utterances. The art of western
civilization, like each other feature of it, is a com-
posite thing; a something that has arisen from the cruci-
ble which Europe was in the Middle Ages. There is,
indeed, in some of the most ancient remains of the early
Italian artists, likenesses both in drawing, and in the use
of color to the Egyptian, and to other defined Semitic work.

However, there is no gainsaying that the Jews were
not identified with the art, or, so far as we can learn, with
the fostering of it in any direction. The Jews neither
carved nor painted their gods, as one writer has put it.
The second commandment was against it. Every effort
was made to keep from their synagogue anything that, to
them, savored of the ways of idolaters* In every land
they knew in those old days, gods in the shape of man,
or strange beasts, were worshipped. From time imme-
morial their prophets had preached against the introduc-
tion into the synagogue of decorations that might attract
the eye and divert the mind from the worship of God. On
many sides beauty, which might so well have attracted

172 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

them, and which tempted them, no doubt, was seen to be
steeped in depravity. Presently, as in the case of the
later Puritans, Seventh Day Adventists, and certain
Baptist and other sects, the revolt of the Jews against the
beautiful, as we regard it, became marked, and the austere
piety of the teachers continued to ban painting, and
statuary, and all worldly allure, for thousands of years.

The more we examine into the Jewish character and
into the vicissitudes of the race, the more sharply are the
Jews revealed as fundamentally a simple people, and far
from the mercenary folk the prejudiced would have us
think. In so far as their worldly well-being is concerned
they have been woefully shortsighted. Against unpopu-
larity which has cost them their blood, they have adhered
to their traditions, though many of these seem to the non-
Jew to be outgrown ; to their religious forms and customs,
with an unparalleled tenacity. Not that theirs is a history
clean of backsliding. On the contrary, this has been fre-
quent. That is where the human qualities of the race
become so marked. They are forever climbing toward the
heavens, and falling or slipping back to the earth; a type
race, if you will, as you trace its history, which brings to
mind John Bunyan's Pilgrim, making his slow progress
toward self-conquest.

For hundreds of years prior to the destruction of
Jerusalem, the Jews had been reacting from a period of
earlier luxury and general moral laxness, which roused
the prophets to repeated denunciation and warning. Their
voluptuousness at that period comes in for some violent
condemnation from Mr. Chamberlain, who scathes the
race for its lapses, its licentiousness, though a few pages
farther on he tells us that though Byron was licentious, it
"makes us love him." A matter of race, it would appear,
decides who may or may not indulge in vice.

THE JEW IN ART 173

In the days of the Jews' worldly splendor, they appear
to have indulged at least in a lavish use of art. So early
as 624 B. C. all the groves and high places about Jerusa-
lem, even as the groves of Athens, held their carved and
molten images. One of the most colorful word pictures
in all Jewish literature is that of the boy-king, Josiah, who
might have served as model for D'Annunzio's "Saint
Sebastien" Taught by the austere priests, and filled with
the clean zeal of the young, you may follow him, as, intent
upon ridding his kingdom of idolatry, he passes through
the groves, beating the brazen statues to powder, and
breaking down the altars which recreant Jews had set up
to false gods, and whom they were worshipping in imita-
tion of the fashions which other nations followed. What
they did, in those days, we do today.

No more stirring example of the keen religious con-
science of Jewry is anywhere extant than this of Josiah.
The wonder is that none of the latter day artists of his
race have chosen this boyish, kingly zealot as the subject
for a painting. From Josiah's time we hear no more of
brazen statues to gods among the Jews. And from these
days a kind of recoil, on principle, from art is noted in
the Jewish race. Grotius, quoting Tacitus, says: "The
Jews look upon every attempt to represent God under the
appearance of human form as a profanation of his
heavenly nature."

When the Renaissance in literature, art, and science
began in Italy and France, united as these countries were
through the Medicean alliances, the Jews had been wan-
derers over the broad face of Europe for a thousand years.
If they gave any attention at all to the increasing art
activities which were going on around them, it was prob-
ably disapproving. There is evidence that the painted and
sculptured saints which met them on every hand, appeared
in their eyes but another form of the idolatries from which

174 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

their ancestors had fled There is nowhere to be found a
record of Jewish painter or sculpture in those days; yet
Jews, as mathematicians, at least, drew, if they did not
paint. A mapmaker of renown lived in Mallorca in the
fourteenth century, who seems to have been, in his way
and day, a celebrity. Such other skill as the Jews may
have had with pencil or brush, or other instrument of the
time, was chiefly exhibited in the illuminating of manu-
scripts, which, even after the discovery of printing, con-
tinued to be prized for some time.

The ban of their law tied them, however, from the
greater fields of art. They enter into them first in the
eighteenth century, when the spirit of revolt, which
Schiller has recognized as the spirit of art, began to
spread through the modern world. Rousseau, Voltaire,
revived and intensified Montaigne's earlier pleas for
toleration for all peoples. On every side the hampered
cried out for freedom. Personalities as inflamed for their
cause as were the early prophets, began to attract the
attention of the world. Some spoke for the Jews, so long
politically handicapped. Lessing was first among these.
Then the Jews began to speak for themselves, not alone
as against their political restrictions, but also against
hampering, obsolete traditions. A new perception came to
many of the race, of the need for being of the world as
well as in it, if they were to rise to the height they were
capable of as men. Jewish love for the beautiful began to
assert its right to express itself.

Quite suddenly miniaturists and portraitists of the
race begin to appear in Denmark, in Italy, in Austria, in
Germany and England. Among the first names of note
to appear in the early eighteenth century is that of Israel
Mengs, of Denmark, a miniaturist of worth and distinc-
tion. Denmark has since had other native-born Jews who
gave value to her art reputation. Karl Bloch, Ernest

THE JEW IN ART 175

Meyer, David Monies, and latterly Geskel Salomon as
genre and portrait painters are all represented in her
galleries.

The Thorwaldsen group, in Rome, so catholic in its
attitude toward all who felt the thrill of art accomplish-
ment stirring them, was one of the first to throw open the
doors of the democracy of art to Jewish students. Soon
they were coming from the north of Europe; from Ger-
many; and a notable figure among the first comers was
Edouard Bendemann. But for the real rank to which he
rose Bendemann's wealth might readily have kept him
classed as a mere rich amateur. He is one of the many
examples to be found among the Jews who refute the
charge of their being solely material and mercenary.

Bendemann turned from a mercantile career that
promised rich rewards, and from an income at hand, to
take a chance with fortune with other Berlin lads less
fortunately born. With a quartette of others, non-Jews,
generally, he started for Rome to take up an art career.
No* doubt the fact that he was one of the group of whom
Moses Mendelssohn was the leading light, accounts for
his aspirational surrender of ease, to take up the life of a
poor student. He spent many years as such; but when
he returned to Berlin, it was to meet a fame that was to
go on increasing throughout his career, whether as
draughtsman, or colorist. Like so many of the artists, lit-
terateurs, and musicians of his race and day, Bendemann
chose his themes from Biblical stories. His many canvases
are still to be found in the noteworthy galleries of his
native land.

Nor did his reputation end with his life. His greatest
work, concerning which much has been written, was "The
Jews Mourning in Babylonian Exile" a majestic compo-
sition, involving a multitude of figures, each one of which
is delineated with remarkable detail, and each of which

176 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

may be said to be a complete study in itself of grief, of
despair, of submission; of accusation, too, as a crowd sur-
rounds the prophet Jeremiah, the central figure of the
picture, reviling him as the cause of their tribulations.
While preceding them by a full quarter of a century, per-
haps even more, this great canvas resembles, in grouping
and coloring, the canvases of David, whose later vogue
in Paris was so great

Bendemann was the most widely known and famous
Jewish painter of the eighteenth century. The great
sought his canvases. On commission for the Crown
Prince he decorated several rooms in the royal palace. On
all sides, social as well as artistic, he was recognized as a
force for the elevation of his people. Rudolph Bende-
mann, his son, also attained high rank among the mural
artists of his day.

From this time on, Jewish artists play an important
part in German painting. Moritz Daniel Oppenheim was
one of the favored Jewish youths who were able to secure
their art education in Rome. He spent years there acquir-
ing a technique, which afterwards brought him fame. He
was one of the first Jewish artists to be taken up by the
fashionable of the early nineteenth century, and the rich
atelier he was able to establish at Frankfort-on-the-Main
became a center where the notables of all races met
Oppenheim made the ghettos of Rome familiar to northern
people; he undertook also to express with his brush the
beauties of the Jewish family and synagogue worship.

Felix Possart, who lived well into the beginning of
this century, did notable work with Spanish subjects. His
interior of "the Alcazar, Seville" the view of "the Alham-
bra from Darrothal" the "Moorish Baths in the
Alhambra" etc., made him one of the famous painters of
Europe.

So early as 1750 Austria had produced at least one

THE JEW IN ART 177

Jewish artist, Raphael Mengs, whose portraits and his-
torical studies stand out. Thereafter she has found her
native Jew continuously illuminating the art world.
Lajas Bruch, long a resident of London and Paris, first
attracted attention in the Salon of 1876. Soon examples
of his work were eagerly sought after by critical collectors
from Europe and America. Philip Szenes, less known,
it may be, in America, has done some of the choicest work
produced by the painters of Austria-Hungary. His can-
vases hang in the Budapest and Dresden galleries, and
are to be found principally in the famous private and royal
galleries of Europe. None who possesses them regards
them as other than enduring contributions to art and
civilization. Austria has elevated a .German Jew, Fried-
lander, to the nobility, giving him the new name of
von Malheim. His canvases, many of which are Swabian
studies, hang in the Imperial galleries at Vienna. His
best-known work is his famous "The Pawnbroker's Shop!'
There died in 1902 a Jewish Hungarian sculptor,
who reflected the greatest glory upon his people
and upon his native country. The story of Josef Engel
reads like an episode of the Michael-Angelo period.
Apprenticed in early boyhood to a wood carver, he had
the good fortune to find in his employer a man of sym-
pathy and vision, who, perceiving his young helper's
ability, assisted the lad to gain entrance to the Academy
of Art. We may not follow his progress step by step, but
with his first exhibited work he gained unusual recogni-
tion. "The Fighting Amazons" the title of this first work,
so charmed Prince Albert, the consort of Victoria, that
he purchased it at once, paying 600 sterling for it. There-
after Engel was enabled to spend twenty years in Rome,
perfecting his knowledge by an industrious study of the
Vatican sculptures. One of his works, "The Parsee"
done on commission for Sir David Solomon, Lord Mayor

178 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

of London, has attained a world-wide celebrity. The most
notable example of his work in Hungary is the famous
Szechenyi Monument in Budapest, which was unveiled
in 1880.

Now, from quite another direction, we come upon
what in some respects is the most amazing of all the work
done by artists of the Jewish race since their recent en-
trance into the art field. Russia has been a name
synonymous with unparalleled persecution of the Jews.
This was continuous under the Czars. Nor have matters
actually changed for the better under the so-called Jewish-
Bolshevists' regime. Yet, notwithstanding her reputa-
tion, no rulers in the world have been nobler in their rec-
ognition and encouragement of the gifted artists of the
Jewish race. Russia has been one with her sons in the
field of art. She certainly has reverenced it and has
looked upon its exponents as "favored of the gods." She
has been generous in the bestowal of honors, and even of
more substantial appreciation upon her painters, her
sculptors, her dramatists, her musicians.

One of the greatest of the Russian artists is the sculp-
tor, Mark Antokolski, a native of Wilna, a city which
has given birth to many Jews who have distinguished
themselves in letters and in the higher professions. In
the beginning Antokolski had not only to battle with pov-
erty, but also against marked racial animosity. Eager for
the aid which associated groups interested in the same
subjects can give to their members, he made application
early in life for membership in the Russian Academy of
Art. He was barred solely because of his race. How-
ever, the time came when, having carved some notable
small pieces in ivory, he attracted the attention of the Czar
Alexander II. These pieces have since become very cele-
brated. They were "The Jewish Tailor" and "The Miser
Counting His Money"

THE JEW IN ART 179

In recognition of the beauty of this work, the Czar
bestowed a pension upon him, which made it possible for
him to proceed to the working out of what proved to be
his later triumphs. His colossal figure of "Peter the
Great," shown at the Exposition in Paris, attracted the
attention of the critical of the world. It was followed by
another colossal group, "The Death of Socrates" This
not only won the highest prize for sculpture offered by the
Exposition, but also a verdict from a jury of the greatest
art authorities in the world, to the effect that the group
was the most notable piece of sculpture of modern times.

It is interesting to observe that after this great acclaim
Russian art circles developed marked eagerness to over-
look Antokolski's race and to welcome him among their
members. But their approval was no longer necessary to
him. His statue of "Ivan the Terrible" caused the Czar
personally to name him an Academician. Notwithstand-
ing the odium his race often brought upon him in the
beginning, Antokolski took a genuine pride in his origin.
His art, however, as the work of great artists should be,
is catholic and universal.

A lesser Russian sculptor, who left behind him notable
busts of celebrities, was Leopold Bernstamm. He did
numerous statuettes, setting a vogue for miniature sculp-
ture among the fashionable art patrons of Paris. Bern-
stamm made busts of Flaubert, Ernest Renan, Victorien
Sardou, Frangois Coppee and many others of the literati
of Paris, where he occupied a unique position. It is said
that the unveiling of a bust by this sculptor was looked
upon as a genuine art event. Perhaps, when all is said
and done, it will be found that Schiller was right, that
art and not the Jews, is the real force operating in the
world today for the internationalizing of the human
groups.

180 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

Nor has Russia been lacking in great painters. Isaac
Lyovich Asknazi struck a high note in his 'Woman Taken
in Adultery" He has been a prolific painter of Biblical
themes. It has been said that his work is the most Jewish
in spirit of any that has come from the painters of that
race. Asknazi has become identified with domestic types
and Jewish family scenes. One of his canvases, "A Jewess
Praying" attracted attention at the Columbian Exposi-
tion, and has since been placed in the St. Louis Museum
of Art.

From Russia, too, came Isaac Levitan, who, though
he ultimately enjoyed a most unusual acclaim through-
out European art circles, yet for years he suffered
the extremest poverty and never attained what people,
generally, regard as comfortable circumstances. His
Russian countrymen looked upon him as an artist-
poet. "He knew how to interpret Nature and her mys-
teries as none other could/ 5 said Count Lyov, as he stood
beside the simple grave into which the poet-artist was
being lowered in 1900; and he added: "Levitan's pic-
tures were not mere paintings ; they were something more.
We not only saw them, but felt them."

Twenty-five of Levitan's canvases are hung in one of
the notable galleries of Russia. It is said that between
1887 and 1897 he produced about a thousand paintings.
Notwithstanding the fact that he, with other Jews of
Russia, suffered greatly during the '80s, and '90s, an anti-
Semitic paper wrote of him, after his death: "This full-
blooded Jew knew, as no other man, how to make us
realize and love our plain and homely country scenes/ 5
Levitan's pictures, some of which were shown at the
Columbian Exposition, have been appraised as singularly
faithful to the Russian spirit, though marked with sad-
ness; but this is a quality that has often been remarked
in Russian painting, literature and music. It remains a:

THE JEW IN ART 181

feature of Jewish expression in the same land. London's
great Chief Rabbi Adler has said that the Jewish scherzo
in fact is little more than an adagio.

France, the artistic Mecca of the modern world, has
numbered distinguished Jewish artists among her native-
born. Albert Levy has won an enviable reputation for his
studies of life in Algiers. Gerome, Dagnon-Bouveret and
others combined to recommend Alphonse Levy for the
Cross of the Legion of Honor. He was prize-winner at
the Beaux Arts and at the Paris Exposition and a Mem-
ber of the French Academy. Jules Worms, a French
Jewish artist, took a Salon medal for three successive
years, winning it again some years later. American col-
lectors have shown great eagerness to obtain examples of
this artist's work.

England, which has produced so many Jews dis-
tinguished in statecraft, and which has opened channels
in which ability of every kind might express itself, has
not, strange to say, numbered very great painters or sculp-
tors among her native-born Jews. Felix Moscheles, son
of the musician; Solomon J. Solomon, a Royal Academi-
cian, and S. A. Hart are among the most prominent.

And yet the half has not been told of the accomplish-
ments of these but late-arrivals in the free world of
art. It would be interesting, though it is not possible here,
to trace to its source the stimulus by which the race has
been, one might almost say, hurried into this artistic
promised land. There were representative Jews, we know,
in Florence, Sienna and Pisa and other Italian cities from
the beginning of The Renaissance. They must have been
aware of the work of Cimabue and Giotto. As a people
they were numerous in the Italian cities in the century
that gave Titian, Michael- Angelo, Raphael and Leonardo
da Vinci to the world. Da Vinci was a great mathemati-
cian, as we know, and it is well within the probabilities

182 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

that he had commerce with the Jewish mathematicians of
his age; but nowhere is there any indication of a benevo-
lent association between any of these great artists and
the Jewish people.

Perhaps, aside from Rabbinical objection to painting,
the social lines may have been too closely drawn to permit
of an opportunity for the encouragement of art among
the Jews, even had these masters thought of offering it
There can hardly be a doubt that many Jews of that period
had art gifts latent in them. Notable rings, made by
Jewish industrial artists, still exist in the foreign museums.
A tale is told of the fiery Cellini, that most cantankerous
of men, finding asylum in one of his only too frequent
flights from the law, in the house of a goldsmith, one
Raphael del Moro, who must have been a Jew, if we
accept the testimony of his name. But the line of early
connection between the Jew and art is too pale and
indefinite to trace further.

Very different conditions arose, however, in Amster-
dam, which proved such a haven to Jews in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. In the course of time we find
Rembrandt so interested in the race, that he fixed his
residence near to the Jewish quarters and there made im-
mortal studies of some of the best types among them. As
he painted, his human interest in them increased He
became the friend of Manasseh ben Israel, who afterward
was the ambassador between his people and Cromwell and
ultimately the instrument by which was secured a read-
mission of the Jews to England after the banishment of
several hundred years.

It would look as though a growing feeling of com-
prehension of the Jew as a man and a brother began at
this period to operate among the nobler minds. Thought
breeds fast, whether of good or ill. The portraits of many
of the scholarly Rabbis and Jewish men of affairs of

THE JEW IN ART 183

Amsterdam, so sympathetically painted by Rembrandt,
went abroad into the finest museums and most notable
private galleries of the world. It would seem to be a
significant fact, that within a hundred years, every coun-
try of northern Europe was claiming more or less notable
Jews among her artists. Certainly something of very
real importance came to the race through the stimulus of
Rembrandt's art and sympathetic comprehension.

In the present day a great Jew has renewed the glory
of Holland as an art center. Josef Israels, perhaps, fur-
nishes the most emphatic refutation that could be cited of
the charge that the Jews are materialists who care for
nothing but the getting of money. Israels was born to
money, to quantities of it. His atmosphere was well
calculated to stir him to the acquisition of more. His
father, a prosperous banker, desired nothing better than
to have his son follow in his footsteps. Indeed, it is said,
he went so far as to compel the youthful Josef to serve
him as bookkeeper, in order to instil business principles
in him.

However, he soon had cause to excuse the young man
from this task, for he discovered his ledger pages to be
decorated, not with figures such as he desired, but with
fanciful sketches, which were more to his progeny's taste.
When he could no longer withhold his consent to his son's
entering upon an artistic career, the elder Israels gave it
with no good will, but cut him off with the merest pittance
of an allowance. The youth, however, stuck to his resolu-
tion. He travelled, he studied Delacroix, Diaz, Millet.
He studied, in fact, all schools of art which were in vogue
in the middle of the last century. Presently he created his
own, incomparably soft in atmosphere yet firm in
draughtsmanship and exquisite in color and modelling.
So prepared, he returned to Holland to make his immortal
studies of the peasants and fisher-folk of Amsterdam.

184 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

Israels has been summed up by world-famous con-
noisseurs as having attained the extreme of realism in
depicting life's sober side, its toil and sacrifices. He has
contributed as none other of his time to the glory of
Holland, and it may be said, without fear of contradiction,
to the culture of the world. He has received more medals
and decorations than we may here enumerate. Though
he has recently passed away, he has left treasures in can-
vases which stand as landmarks in the art of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries and are represented in every
notable collection in the old and new worlds.

In the eighteenth century there were Jewish as well
as non- Jewish painters in America. Modest, most of
them, none have left work behind them of more than
sentimental value; but it may be said that when artists
of worth began to paint here, the richer members of the
Jewish population were among the first to encourage such
painters as Stuart, Sully, George P. A. Healy, Charles
Wilson Peale, Jeremiah Theus, John Wesley Jarvis and
others. One of the most beautiful of the Gilbert Stuart
paintings was of Mrs. Solomon Moses, who was sister to
the famous Rebecca Gratz, and herself a lovely type of
her race. Rebecca Gratz has been identified as the model
from whom Scott drew his inspiration for the Jewish
maiden in "Ivanhoe" Miss Gratz and her father were
both painted by Thomas Sully, the canvases being now in
Montreal, in the collection of Henry Joseph, Esquire.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century admirable
work was in sight from American Jewish artists; and,
as the century advanced, we find the two Rosenthals, Max
Weyl and others attracting the attention of the critical.
Henry Mosler, H. N. Hyneman, and George deM.
Peixotto, all have contributed important service in the
building up of art interests in the United States, and their
lists were soon to be swelled by the names of Albert

THE JEW IN ART 185

Sterner, Koopman, Meilziner, and numerous genre
painters, portraitists, water colorists and etchers, many of
whom have established reputations abroad as well as at
home.

The most distinguished craftsman of his race which
America can as yet claim is the genre painter, Henry
Mosler. His is a permanent position in the world's art
roll Mosler exhibited his canvas, "The Return of the
Prodigal Son" at the Paris Salon in 1888, and it was
almost instantly purchased by the French Government for
the Luxembourg. Within a year he received the Salon
Gold Medal, and the .Gold Medal of Carl Ludwig of Aus-
tria. In 1892 France made him a Chevalier of the Legion
of Honor. Four years later he won the Thomas B.
Clarke Prize at the New York National Academy of
Design. Two of his notable works went into the collec-
tions of rich amateurs of his own race, "The Wedding
Feast" being purchased by the late Jacob H. Schiff, and
Invoking God's Blessing" by the late Henry E. Selig-
man. Albert Sterner's beautiful watercolors and notable
book illustrations rank high among the pictorial products
of the time. Peixotto has attained a position of value
through his portraits of such notable men as the late
President McKinley, John Hay, Sir Moses Montefiore,
Cardinal Manning and others.

When we come to consider Moses Ezekiai we reach
a representative Jew who has given to the world the
most distinguished sculptures of which his race in America
can boast Born in Virginia, Ezekiai was knighted by
the King of Italy and by the Emperor of Germany.
Always proud of his American birth, however, he never
relinquished his citizenship, though he spent many years
in other lands. He was a lad when the Civil War broke
out. At fourteen he was fighting in the ranks with the
Confederate Army. When the great struggle was over,

186 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

Ezekial turned to the study of painting; but we soon
hear of him as a sculptor in Rome, where he settled after
a period of study in Germany. His statue of "Eve" was
placed in the Emperor's Palace there. One of the first
works from his chisel to attract American attention was
the colossal bust of Washington which stands in the Cin-
cinnati Art Museum. His heroic figures of Phidias,
Raphael, and other artists fill the niches of the Corcoran
Gallery at Washington. La Chapelle de la Charite, at
Paris, and St. Margaret's at Westminster, both contain
specimens of this sculptor's work, and others adorn many
cities in the old and new world.

From the lesser countries of Europe, and from South
America, Jewish artists are coming into view. Excellent
work which hangs in galleries at Adelaide and Melbourne
is from the brushes of native Australian Jews. One of
the first institutions to be established in Palestine is a
school for instructions in the arts.

This record of Jewish contributions to the art of the
last and the present centuries is incomplete ; yet it should
be sufficient to indicate the Jew's large share in late addi-
tions to the culture of the world. But let us turn to his
part in another field, that of music*

CHAPTER X
The Jew in Music

Jubd was already acknowledged as "the father of
all such as handle the harp and the organ" in 3,875
B. C. The Jew was the first to recognize the patho-
logical value of Music. When Saul, about noo B, C.
having ceased to commune with God, was troubled
by an evil spirit, his servants begged him to permit
them^ to seek out ee a man who is cunning with the harp;
for it shall come to pass that when an evil spirit is
upon thee, he shall play with his hand and thou shalt
be well." When permission was given, they be-
sought Jesse to dlow his son to soothe the king.
"And it came to pass that David took an harp and
played with his hand; so Saul was refreshed and the
evil spirit departed from him".

A. s.
(See Genesis 4,21; and I Samuel, 16. 14-23)

TO get an approximate idea of the influence of the
Jew in music, it is necessary to glimpse the history of
this youngest yet most ancient of the arts before we reach
its remarkable and so recent revival and expansion. Its
origin is lost in the remote past. Goethe said of music
that "it stands so high that no understanding can reach it,
and an influence flows from it which masters all and for
which none can account. Hence, religious worship cannot
dispense with it. It is one of the chief means of working
upon men miraculously." Ergo, from the beginning all
religious rites have had their musical elements. Before
arriving at its present forms, it has passed through many
vicissitudes, enjoying periods of favor in alternation with
those of reprobation. It can hardly be said to have attained
the stature of modern art until within the past four hun-
dred years. The Jews have shared in its development
scarcely more than a hundred years.

When we take into consideration the great Opera
Houses of the present day, the innumerable concert halls;

187

THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

the hosts of persons variously gifted who find their place
in life in the entertaining of others by music; the armies
of instrumentalists, soloists, and group singers; the
teachers for the training of these hosts; the schools, the
conservatories; the choral societies and orchestral bodies
that are now a feature of every city of size in the world;
the numerous instrument-makers and publishers who sup-
ply this world of music, it is difficult to grasp the fact that
music only began to attain its present social and com-
mercial as well as art significance in the sixteenth century.

Fathered by Palestrina, "Prince of Music/' but
grandfathered by the magnificent Lorenzo of the Medicis,
whose May Songs are the notable relics of his day, it
branched into its present form, its present scales, phrases,
and contrapuntal complexities, in Italy, where Jews were
many, and artists flourished there as never before. A
careful reading of the literature of those and anterior
times would lead to the supposition that the Jews, though
apart from the Christian world, nevertheless may have
been healthy supporting influences in the developing
period of the art. There is scarcely a doubt that their
enforced international character had a most useful part
in the work. Even as the Crusaders, in passing back and
forth, carried from place to place melodies from Spain
which, in turn, had come through the Arabs, so the Jews,
wherever they travelled, in addition to their treasured
tunes from old Judea, bore with them such pleasing folk
airs as they might catch up as they passed. Such airs,
hummed or strummed, first by this and then by that group,
soon formed a link between group and group a sort of
international bond of interest.

It is a tradition among the Jews, but one which his-
torians of music dispute, and with some show of reason
in special cases, that the tunes used then and continuously
even up to the present time in their orthodox services,

THE JEW IN MUSIC 189

have come down in their exact original state from the
period of the dispersion. There are even said to be extant
and in use tunes which were used by David. These moot
points we shall not attempt to clear up here. The im-
portant fact is that the Jews religiously preserved, from
generation to generation, their early synagogue music.
None but a race in which music was inherent would so
reverence it.

In post-Biblical days they seem gradually to have dis-
carded instrumental music in their worship, though prior
to the destruction of the Temple it had been an important
part of its ceremonies. Many instruments were kept in
the Temple at Jerusalem, in order to have them ready for
the priests when required. This custom evidently was
continued in the Turkish synagogues to a late day; for it
is recorded that in the twelfth century a deposit of ancient
instruments was found in an upper room of a synagogue
at Bagdad.

To diverge for a moment: The upper rooms, and
the inner ones, of the old synagogues often concealed for
centuries relics of the utmost importance. It was the cus-
tom to use them as depositories for outworn Temple
accessories, which sentiment forbade them to destroy.
It was due to the renovation of the Temple that
Hilkiah, the High Priest, forbear of the Prophet Jere-
miah, looking among such discards, came upon the Book
of the Law, the last work of Moses, upon which all later
Jewish writings have been based. In a similar way the
late Dr. Solomon Schecter, while still attached to Cam-
bridge University^ came upon the priceless deposit of
scrolls and manuscripts in an upper room of a Jerusalem
synagogue, which are now to be seen at the Jewish Theo-
logical Seminary in New York City,

So far as has been ascertained, however, these
manuscripts reveal nothing of the Jews in music in the

190 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

present era. It is said that in the eleventh century the folk
airs of other peoples had begun, to the great indignation
of the orthodox, to affect the Jews' traditional melodies.
One of their historians has noted that "the Rabbis began
to observe with alarm spirited lovers 5 songs applied to holy
psalms/' To them this was nothing less than sacrilege.
They protested vehemently, but without lasting effect
Change, though operating with them so slowly as to be
almost imperceptible, was in the air. Several years later
we come upon a gifted musician, a contemporary of Pales-
trina, one Israel Najara, a Rabbi of Gaz, who published in
1579 six hundred Hebrew lyrics, set to the choicest melo-
dies of Arabia, Spain, Italy, Turkey and Greece. Even he
was frowned upon by the orthodox Rabbis, whose rule
was "that the traditional must not be varied in any place,
even in the matter of melodies to which the people are not
accustomed."

But if we may trust the incidents which early
romancers have woven into their stories those which
elaborate the D'Annunzian poetic dramas, which, how-
ever adorned by that author's incomparable imagination,
are generally regarded as historically accurate there
were Jews skilled in music who went about from country
villa to country villa, singing to and teaching the ladies the
songs that were the latest fashion in Florence or in Rome,
and making an honest penny in that very pleasant way.
Those who were domiciled in these cities, however, do not
figure in the musical records of those times. It may be
that in this field, as has happened in some others, notably
in literature, they have lacked historians, and, conse-
quently, some of their just dues.

In 1622 we find them publishing music in Venice,
where Solomon de Rossi, regarded as 'The Father of
Modern Synagogue music/' began what was spoken of as
"the regeneration of Zion's songs." He seems to have

THE JEW IN MUSIC 191

been supported by a number of progressive Rabbis, who,
like certain Methodist clergymen of a later date, had
waked up to the mistake of 'letting the devil have all the
pretty tunes/'

Rossi introduced perfected counterpoint and poly-
phonic music into the synagogues. A critic of the time
has said that he brought into his music a wonderful homo-
geneity and the echoes of many lands and peoples,
together with a new and surprising dramatic quality.
However, he appears not to have been sufficiently popular
to maintain the new music against the steady opposition
of the traditionalists, or to attract the attention of the
non- Jewish world.

It should be said, however, that the orthodox Rabbis
were no more opposed to the innovations that were being
introduced into their music than were sundry Christians
who threw their energies into opposing the development
of the same art. Those who had to do with it, came in
for abuse or derision from many such quarters. In Eng-
land, in 1579, Stephen Gosson felt such scorn for musi-
cians and all who dallied with them that he wrote a tjook
entitled: "The Schoole of Abuse conteining a Pleasaunt
Invective against Poets, Plaiers, Pipers, Jesters, and Such
like Caterpillers of the Commonwealth." His work is a
monument to the estimate placed by some upon music in
the great Elizabethan age. When Gosson wrote, Shakes-
peare had not arrived to define music as "the food of love."

It may be added, as time went on, far from soften-
ing toward the new and multiform instrumental music, the
orthodox Rabbis, as it became increasingly a feature in
the Church's services, held more and more rigidly to their
rule of excluding it. Even today the organ has no place
in their Temples. In New York, in the twentieth century,
its use has been preached against. In 1815 a notable in-
stance occurred of Jewish determination to keep a feature

192 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

so profane from desecrating their services. By this
time the thought of emancipation had begun to operate in
a large part of the race. It was not an emancipation from
the spirit of their Laws, but rather from the letter that
bound upon them forms and phrases that were obsolete.
Their worship became, if anything, more fervent than it
had been, but they sought to relieve the austerity of, and
to beautify the synagogue ceremonies. A new edifice was
built in Berlin and a distinguished Rabbi invited to dedi-
cate it. An organ had been installed, but when the clergy-
man saw it, he recoiled with horror. He denounced it
loudly, and carried his complaint to the King, with the
plea that the synagogue be closed. It is interesting to
learn that his prayer was granted. However, three years
later another attempt was made by the Hamburg pro-
gressives, and this time, by means of a compromise the
organ remained, a non- Jewish organist being brought in
to play it.

It will be seen that the entry -of the Jew into this
modern art field was no easy matter. On the one side
religious traditions bound him; on the other, there was
the opposition of non- Jews. For centuries the musical
guilds, unions, societies, had put up barriers against ad-
mitting Jews to membership, even as the artisan guilds
and unions throughout Europe had barred them. How
marvellously they have broken down prejudices, how tri-
umphantly they have taken rank in the new art will be
seen by glancing over even an incomplete outline of the
story of the last century.

Cb-incidentally with their appearance as composers,
interpreters, music begins to enchain the interest of all
classes. Examine the records of it for the past hundred
years, and you will find that through educational, munici-
pal, religious and other agencies, it has superseded both
painting and sculpture in the ordinary life. Musical in-

THE JEW IN MUSIC 193

strtunents in some form, though it be only mechanical, are
to be found in every household, in every public gathering-
place. Because its pathological value has been definitely
ascertained, it finds a place in every hospital and public
institution. The insane are soothed by it, and prisoners
made more readily amenable to the authorities under
whom they are placed. Children are drilled to it at
school, and at home entertained by it. You dine with it
in public places, pray with it in church.

The universal application of music, its progress step
by step, may be traced to the time of the appearance of the
Jew in the modern musical world. This, very naturally,
calls up the question as to how far the race is responsible
for bringing about this condition. Have they done any-
thing besides popularizing music, and if so, what? This
question was put to one whose income is derived from a
Jew's enthusiasm for the art. His answer came with a
glance in which there was at least a shade of indignation,
and unmistakable contempt.

"What have they done?" he asked, with an accent
on the "have" which held a sting. "They claim a lot, but
have they produced a Liszt, a Wagner, a Gounod, a
Paganini or Paderewski?" Now, counter-questions of
this sort hurled so suddenly at one who is not a specialist
in an art so crowded as music being in the nature of a
"poser," they brought a reply that began tentatively:

"Possibly not and yet " But here courage re-
turned "Yet, when you come to think of it, it is not more
than a century since a musical career became possible to
the Jews. In that time they have given the world a
Moscheles "

"A Moscheles" this with a shrug of the shoulders,
and a glance of pitying amusement.

"True, his vogue may be passing; but in his time he
not only composed fine scores, which are still heard in

194 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

modern repertories, but he was among the first Jews who
made themselves acceptable in the art to critical London.
It hailed him as the conductor of its greatest Philharmonic
Orchestra. Besides, he taught and inspired many greater
musicians. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was one of these, who
in his day, as composer, conductor, and pianist, literally
carried all before him/ Marchesi, in her memoirs, says
that 'London worshipped 5 Mendelssohn. His f Songs with-
out Words,' his Walpurgisnachf music, his 'Elijah' and
f St. Paul' etc., etc., are surely true art products. When
Judah spoke through Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, it was with
a heavenly voice that still charms the world.

"There is Meyerbeer, creator, as Liszt called him, 'of
Cyclopean melodies/ He dazzled his contemporaries and
after-generations as well with his splendor of imagination.
In return for his contribution to art, in 'UAfricaine' 'Les
Huguenots* f Le Prophet e* etc., he was rewarded by
medals and other distinctions from every civilized govern-
ment. His bold operatic pictures, theatrical, if you will,
undoubtedly stimulated Wagner for the great work he
was to do. It is said that Wagner 'had no use for Jews/
yet he accepted with no ill-will substantial aid when neces-
sary from Meyerbeer, who was the son of a rich banker.

"The race has given Rubinstein to the world, not only
a great composer, but one of the three great pianists of
the last century, the others being Liszt and Carl Taussig.
Taussig was a Jew from Poland, whose Jews of late have
been very bitterly denounced, in one instance, chiefly be-
cause the orthodox among them wear beards and gabar-
dines. Beards, by the way, have not so long been out of
fashion in America. All the great heroes of Lincoln's
day wore them, and a study of Watts' portrait of Burne-
Jones will show that that most aesthetic of the jartists of
the period had been at pains to acquire a thoroughly
Jewish hirsute adornment. Apropos of Carl Taussig; it

THE JEW IN MUSIC 195

was he who devised the plan by which 300,000 thalers
were raised for the building of Wagner's Bayreuth
Theatre"

But here the interlocutor, uncomfortable, remembered
an engagement. We may dismiss him and consider
farther the part the Jews have had in music. Elsewhere
it is suggested that the art movement among the Jews
nearly a century earlier may have been due in a great
part to Rembrandt's sympathy and understanding of the
race, of whom he made so many studies. He certainly
revealed them to the world in a dignity theretofore un-
known. In considering the sudden recognition of the
Jew in musical art, there would appear to have arisen
another very different, yet even more powerful force in
his behalf in the person of Handel. In so far as is known
none has inquired into the effect upon the public of his
day of that master's musical treatment of Biblical themes.
They were entirely new music-forms. Their stories were
emotional appeals for the Jew, whom they raised imme-
diately into prominence. They held up the race's heroic,
its noble, and its pathetic past in a manner altogether
electrifying. They put the Jew into the art thoughts of
the world; into the one art of all others which could lift
the human being from the sordid and mean of the daily
life, to higher concepts of mankind.

We are told that Handel's Oratories, for almost a
generation, met with every form of abuse. There is reason
for supposing that some of this arose from his exaltation
of the Jew, who, then, even more than at present, was a
"problem" which everyone was thinking of, talking of,
writing of; but the encroachments of rival composers
from Italy, at first glance, had more to do with Handel's
innovations* He was confronted with competitors who
threatened his popularity; but he was the last man to give
ground in such a struggle.

196 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

The greatest musical figure of his time, Handel may
be said literally to have forced his works upon the London
public. He did so at a time when Moses Mendelssohn, in
Germany, was beginning his great mission that was to
lead the Jewish people to their present political freedom
by way of the University and general education. Men-
delssohn in Berlin, through letters, and Handel, working
through the emotions and imaginations in London, each
had part in affecting a change in that variable quantity
which we call public opinion.

Mendelssohn worked with a definite and high hope in
view. In all probability, Handel had nothing, in mind
beyond the downing of Italian rivals, whose operas were
proving more to the taste of Londoners than his own. He
was probably an unconscious instrument acting under the
directions of the great Maestro, but he went to his work
with a will. As is known, he was naturally catholic in
his attitude toward mankind. He drank his beer with
equal satisfaction in the company of the dyer, the artist
or his own secretary. He refused to differentiate between
man and man, on the mere ground of race or religion.

When he set out with his Biblical compositions in
their new oratorio forms to defeat the Italians who had
superseded him so successfully with their more frivolous
operas, all the cliques in London opposed him. He ceased
to be fashionable for a time. Horace Walpole said that
since foreign singers would not sing for him, Handel hired
all the farce goddesses and variety-hall singers in town
to give voice to his great "Hallelujah Chorus."

But little cared Handel for Walpole's satire; or any-
one else's. "Samson," "Joshua" "Israel" "Susanna"
"Judas Maccabeus" poured from him, one after the other,
an inexhaustible stream from an inexhaustible source,
which was to have its part in stimulating a race through
its emotions to a new self consciousness; for it is im-

THE JEW IN MUSIC 197

possible not to think that the Jews, who turned out in
numbers to hear the new Oratories, who bought their
scores, and studied and discussed them, did not feel in
those stirring emotional pictures, a great inward thrill of
new possibilities in them. Similarly, it is impossible to
avoid the thought that the very tradesmen of the city, who
thronged to hear the new music they could do so and
easily, since admission to it was to be had for the payment
of a shilling; real "pops" these performances were
looked thereafter upon their Jewish neighbors with a new
interest, a new enquiry,

A great many forces now began to work to open the
way for the Jews in music. The statesmen of the day
were all discussing the advisability of removing "the dis-
abilities' 5 under which the race lived among them. Jewish
men of family were admitted, if somewhat tentatively,
into the German Army, on equal terms with other men.
Voices more potent than those of Statesmen or pam-
phleteers began to utter their plea to the common mind, for
brotherhood among men. Schiller wrote his Ode an die
Freude, which moved Beethoven, the artist of artists, who
'"had the gift to feel and understand his Maker's pres-
ence/' to speed, through his music, a message of universal
brotherhood in his Ninth Symphony, which was to roll on
through the centuries. Shubert sings his "Edgar's
Lament" and his "Bonds of Humanity"; everywhere, art,
through her many agents, begins the melting away of the
fetters which prejudice and the cruelty of creeds, greed
and politics had welded about the Jews for a thousand
years and more.

Suddenly, in a paean of grateful joy, the race breaks
into melody. Moscheles comes from Bohemia to London,
young, ardent, with concertos and sonatas in his hand, of
such quality that the world turns to examine him. One
of his first offerings was his "Homage a Beethoven" He,

198 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

preceding and also surviving his pupil, Mendelssohn-
Bartholdy by many years, in many respects was a path-
finder for his race. The hours of delight, of exaltation,
which Ignatz Moscheles, as an artist, and through his
greater pupils, provided for the modern world, form a
contribution of immeasurable value to civilization. At
twenty-four he was teaching Mendelssohn-Biartholdy. A
few years later we find him, succeeding Sir Henry Bishop,
as conductor of the London Philharmonic Society. His
Concertos in G Minor and "Pathetique" were in high
vogue, as they are among today's musicians. Moscheles
was to be followed, however, by a long line of Jewish
musicians, who were, if not to obscure him, at least to
overshadow him by the brilliancy of their talents. They
were destined, indeed, to illuminate all musical history.

Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, his pupil, has been summed
up as one of the most electric and original musicians who
ever lived. Grandson of Moses Mendelssohn, one of the
world figures of his day, fortune, birth, circumstances, all
combined to give aid to Felix Mendelssohn's genius.
Volumes have been written about him (some by Moscheles
and his son) and about his compositions. As an instru-
mental composer, he ranks nearer to Beethoven than any
musician of his century, and that a wonderful century for
its chorus of masters, minor and major. Ferdinand Hiller
was not one of the least of these. Liszt, who knew them
both and who has painted an immortal pen picture of a
group gathered about the chair of the declining Chopin,
of which Hiller was one, said of Hiller, that whether as a
pianist or composer for the piano, he was allied, at least in
spirit and technique, with the Polish artist.

Halevy in whose veins ran blood that might be
traced back to the most glorious days of Spain, and thence
into the ancient line of Levi, wrote, besides many lesser
operas, his masterpiece, La Juivc. Like Moscheles and

THE JEW IN MUSIC 199

Hiller, he also taught, and among his pupils were many
who outshone their master, Gounod, Bizet, and Bazin
among them. Nor was the race to derive its glory in
music through the instrumentalists only. Famous singers
came from their ranks, John Braham (abbreviated from
Abraham) among others, who held for three decades the
first rank at Covent Garden; directors and impresarios
numbers of them, began to appear, who were to prove pow-
erful distributors of music, promulgators of it. Otto Gold-
schmidt, though he walks in the shadow of his incom-
parable wife, Jenny Lind, was not only distinguished as
"a gentleman of the highest general culture," but as an
accomplished musician, co-worker with Sir William Bene-
dict in the development of music in London, and in the
founding of the Bach Society. He directed some of the
greatest musical festivals of his time.

Liszt is said to have caught up the Jewish child
prodigy, Anton Rubinstein, clasping him in ecstacy as he
declared : "He shall be my musical heir I" As the genius
of Rubinstein grew with his physical growth, he, presently,
was hailed as few pianist-composers have been hailed, in
all corners of the earth. It is said that the Czar was so
proud of his Jewish subject, that he addressed him, smil-
ingly, as "your Excellency". When under the charm of
music Russia has always forgotten her tendency to racial
discrimination. She was proud to number her Jewish
geniuses among her great and in innumerable instances her
Czars have smoothed the way for them. So late as in the
great world war, Efram Zimbalist and Micha Elman,
great among living violinists, were excused from military
service, that they might be secure to the art world. Karl
Goldmark was another of Russia's distinguished Jewish
sons, whose "Queen of Sheba" was first presented at the
Metropolitan Opera House in 1885 by Anton Seidl. Other

200 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

of his notable work was the writing of the score for the
poetic Indian drama "Sakuntala" by Kalydas.

Nor may we omit Jacques Offenbach, whose lively
burlesques have put gaiety into the heart of the world.
Had Offenbach been a poet, he would have been a parodist.
As it was, he created that form of music which we call
burlesque opera, or, opera comique. Having first set his
muse to work upon parodies of la Fontaine's fables, he
shortly thereafter met with success as the composer of
music for de Musset's "La Chandelier". Afterward
America came to know him through his later works,
"Barbe-Bleu" "La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein"; "la
Belle Helene" and others.

France cherished many Jewish musicians, among
them in the later days, Saint-Saens, and the director
Edouard Colonne, (in private life, Jules Juda). In what-
soever line you follow them, the contributions of Jewry to
music, is endless, and inestimable. The great violinists,
Wienawski, Joachim, Joseffy; the most famous directors
and impresarios a volume might be devoted to them.
Max Maretzek, one of the pioneers in this field to spread
a taste for opera in America, conducted in New York in
1848, and "made opera fashionable" as it had not been
before in the young republic. He dared much in the way
of introducing new works, many of which have become
permanent in the repertories of great Opera Houses. He
introduced his child sister-in-law, Adelina Patti to Amer-
ica; also Piccolomini, Minnie Hauck, and Lucca, and him-
self wrote the opera, "Hamlet". "One of the most lovable
of men", as he was called, he lived to celebrate his "golden
jubilee", in which the greatest musicians of his time took
part.

Maurice Grau, Alfred Hertz, a list too long to be
given here, all in turn have made their contributions to a
world which forgot under the charm of their genius to

THE JEW IN MUSIC 201

think of race or creed. Again, few musicians have had so
great a part in educating the American public to an appre-
ciation of the profounder elements in music than Dr.
Leopold Damrosch, founder of the Oratorio and the New
York Symphony Societies, and notable as the musician
who established German Opera (in 1884) in the Metro-
politan Opera House repertory. Dr. Damrosch, whose
degree came to him through Columbia University, not
only gathered the first German company to be heard at
the Metropolitan, but himself conducted them. He was
esteemed the greatest conductor of his time; but, what was
more, as one has written, "no man, unless, it may be,
Theodore Thomas, has contributed so much as he to the
cultivation of good music in America".

In view of even this fragmentary telling of the Jews'
contribution of music to the world, can any ask the ques-
tion today: What have they done for civilization?

CHAPTER XI
The Jew in Mathematics; in Physics

"In the achievements of science there is not only
beauty and wonder, but also beneficence and power.
It is not only that she has revealed to us infinite space
crowded with unnumbered worlds; infinite time peo-
pled by unnumbered existences; infinite organisms
hitherto invisible, but full of delicate and iridescent
loveliness; but also that she has been as a great Arch-
angel of Mercy, devoting herself to the service of
man. She has labored, her votaries have labored, not
to increase the power of despots, or add to the mag-
nificence of courts, but to extend human happiness, to
economise human effort, to extinguish human pain.
She points not to pyramids built during
weary centuries by the sweat of miserable nations, but
to the lighttiouse and the steamship, to the railroad
and the telegraph . . . She has lengthened life;
she has minimized danger, controlled madness, tram-
pled on disease . . "

ARCHDEACON FAKRAR.

TV TOTWITHSTANDING the honor which the world
-L\l of scientists yields to their Jewish confreres, the
Messrs. Michaelson, Bergson, Einstein, and a host of
lesser men, who, nevertheless, have made and are making
continually, great discoveries toward improving condi-
tions of life for humanity, there have been published, and
recently, a vast amount of deliberate mispraisement of the
Jew in science as in other departments of life, and ingenious
arguments, th purpose of which is to minimize his present-
day worth, and to deny his race a position among the
pioneers in the field of physics. It is not surprising if the
uninformed, overwhelmed by the dogmatic positiveness of
such a rabid foe to the Jews as Mr. Chamberlain who
angrily deplores that ' r Walhalla and Olympus became de-
populated because the Jewish priests wished it so"

202

THE JEW IN MATHEMATICS; IN PHYSICS 203

should take on similar prejudice and beliefs; or that
they should accept his violent assertions when he declares
that it was the Jews' scorn of science which long retarded
the spread of knowledge along scientific lines. Nor is it
to be wondered at if the uneducated, seeing in a news-sheet
a belittling allusion to the uselessness of star-measuring
should find themselves repeating such idle estimates of the
scientific seekers, especially in connection with the measur-
ing of Betelgueuse.

Mr. Chamberlain's statement is an interesting admis-
sion in more ways than one. It ascribes to a people strictly
"inferior", and he so names them over and over again,
powers which only a distinctly superior people could
possess. This contradiction is a common characteristic,
as has been pointed out in another connection, of the reso-
lute anti-Semite; but few so often display it as does the
writer just referred to. He pronounces the Jews "mentally
sterile", and presently shows them to be the most mentally
active people in the world, dangerously creative in fact;
he undertakes to prove them the most money-worshipping
race in the world by means of a characteristic with which
he invests the matriarch Rebekah and denies them wit
enough to invent numerals.

To prove their stupidity he says that in sharp busi-
ness transactions "one Armenian is a match for three
Jews/' He resorts, as well, to quoting Apion's time-worn
accusation ascribing it to Wellhausen that "the Jews
never invented anything/ 5 and he attaches a deal ^of in-
dexed learning to prove that the race has never even been
near to "grasping the eel of science"; to prove, as well,
that all the Jewish people knew they with a known history
of three thousand years, and a traditional one of many
thousands more they borrowed, he says, from their young
neighbors, the Greeks, who came into existence 800 B. C

204 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

The reconciliation of divergencies of this sort, how-
ever, is a task for the archaeologist. The modern indi-
vidual is scarcely concerned with them. The reasoning in-
dividual by this time is pretty sure that "the manifold struc-
ture of civilization" necessarily must have been erected
by the common effort of a multiplex humanity. Common
facts in science known to the early peoples can no longer
be traced to a single human group. The dwellers by the
waterways learned to make their primitive water-crafts,
as those on the plains made their caravans, simultaneously,
necessity being the mother of invention. The Chinese,
with a long sea-coast, (the Phoenicians, similarly, later)
are said to have been the first to guide their craft by a
given star ; the first to devise a compass, which, as Locke
has said, has done more to increase the production and
invention of useful commodities than the building of fac-
tories.

Chinese navigators probably traversed the Indian
ocean, directing their way with a compass, at a time when
the Grecian and Phoenician fleets, propelled by cautious
oarsmen could but crawl along the shore save when the
polar star was visible to guide them. The Greeks, we
know, were still regarding the sun as a great fiery torch
in the heavens, a something lighted and extinguished each
day, long centuries after the Hebrew patriarchs had
recognized it as a something that "marched in the proces-
sion of heavenly bodies" ; a work of God, and part of a
great system. Long, immeasurably long before the writ-
ing of the book of Genesis for science led and did not
follow literature, as Francis Bacon has made clear men
from China to the Assyrian plains, thence on to Palestine
where the stars still sparkle and glow incomparably' in the
bosom of night men whose names we shall never know,
searched the spangled depths above them in awed curiosity.
Who they were, nothing is left to tell save the precious

THE JEW IN MATHEMATICS; IN PHYSICS 205

traditions of the Jews; but one of them, looking into the
night has left his immortal impression of the wonders he
beheld there. "The Heavens declare the glory of God and
the firmament showeth His handiwork. 5 ' "When I con-
sider Thy Heavens/' wrote one of the early psalmists,
David, or another, "the work of thy fingers, the moon and
the stars which thou hast ordained ; what is man that thou
art mindful of him?" These observers of the skies, who
lived approximately about 1000 B. C. make notable allu-
sions to all manner of living things, showing that natural
philosophy was making its appeal to them, as well.

Jewish tradition, at least as reliable as any other, and
given to the world not by a careless scribe, but by the
scholar Josephus, of priestly birth and instruction, indi-
cates that under the Pharoahs the Jews were already
acquainted with simple mathematics, for they built city
walls, cut river channels and made dams "to restrain the
river" ; and, the historian adds, they even had part in the
building of the lesser pyramids, all of which feats required
knowledge of a high order, which was surely not possessed
by a mean people. But this Mr. Chamberlain ignores and
pictures the Jews in this wise :

Having analyzed the race from many angles, and
found them, as Semites, to be lacking in all fine qualities,
he proves conclusively that they were not full Semites, but
half Syrians, which race, to this point he has praised
highly. But, having proven the Jews of thousands of
years ago to be half-Semites and half-Syrians, he proceeds
to show that they had also a large admixture of Indo-
European, with possibly Sumero-Accadian blood in their
veins! According to the reports from the latest excava-
tion fields, this is going farther back than even the Jews
claim to trace their ancient origin. It also supports their
claim to a very early culture, bearing most favorably upon
the race as being connected with the developing science of

206 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

the Sumero-Accadians, who, as predecessors of the Chal-
deans, are credited with being the most advanced people
in that early world; for Abram, the acknowledged father
of the Jews, is also identified as having come out from the
city of Ur in the land of the Chaldeans.

Abram, who lived considerably more than 4000 B. C.
as Josephus tells us, was a wise and sagacious man "when
he discoursed on any subject he undertook; and this not
only in understanding it, but in persuading other men also
to assent to him". He argued religious points with the
Egyptians, and "was admired for his wisdom" ; and, "he
communicated to them arithmetic and delivered to them
the science of astronomy; for before Abram came into
Egypt they were unacquainted with these parts of learn-
ing; for that science came from the Chaldeans into Egypt
and thence to the Greeks also' 5 . We have it from the
same source, that the family of Seth, placed by the Oxford
authorities at about 4004 B. C., were the inventors "of
that peculiar sort of wisdom which is concerned with the
heavenly bodies and their order. And that their inven-
tions might not be lost before they were sufficiently known
. . . they made two pillars, the one of brick and the
other of stone, and they inscribed their discoveries on
them", their hope being to preserve them for future ages.
These pillars, however, have long furnished matter for
furious disputes among contending scholars, as, indeed, al-
most everything related by the ancients has done. We
shall find it, then, more profitable to continue our tracing
of the Jew in science, even to that of today.

Whether "Pan lent his pagan horn to Moses" as Pope
has it, or Moses threw his torch of wisdom to Pan will
probably never be discovered; but the odds are in favor of
Moses, if we may trust, as age upon age has had to trust,
the treasured manuscripts of the Jews, which were surely
the work of intensely serious students of the mysterious

THE JEW IN MATHEMATICS; IN PHYSICS 207

skies and their wonders. The Book of Job, which dates
from about 1520 B. C. refers to "Arcturus, Orion and the
Pleiades and the chambers of the South"; showing that
these orbs were already distinctly identified. Already in
the narrative of Genesis, shadows had been noted, and
the division of time was already begun into days and
months and years. Observations were early made on the
"vapors" that arose from the fields, and metals were early
worked, so that at every step in the Writings two things
are clear: that natural philosophy interested that young
Jewish world; that it unfolded its secrets to them respond-
ing at every point as a reward to the God-seeker. This
was not only true in connection with the findings of the
early Hebrews, but, as well, as time went on, with such
enlightened scientific men as Aristotle, for he recognized
and looked for, back of all, the "immovable Mover" of all
things.

The type of mind that has gone angling into the
depths of antiquity for matter with which to besmirch the
modern Jew is sufficiently courageous, as has been said,
to declare that the early Hebrews stole their knowledge from
( 1 ) the Babylonians, and ( 2 ) from the Greeks. But none of
the many who have picked up and repeated this statement
appears to have examined it. The written record of the
Greeks begins only about the fifth century B. C. That of
the Babylonians, thus far has not been traced further back
than about 650 B. C at which time the Jews were recording
in their own defined and formed language, their traditions
of long ages. From the arrowpoint language of the earlier
Sumero-Accadians of which the world has only recently
become aware, it has been possible to confirm the general
idea of historians that science first unfolded in the East
and to opine that the zodiac came from the Phoenicians,
but little more. But the Jewish peoples, descendants of

208 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

the Sumero-Accadians, the occupants in remote ages of
Chaldea, afterward Babylon, knew much of the starry
heavens, and had other names for the planetary bodies.
There would seern, all things considered, some reason for
looking into the question of how the lusty young Greeks
and the still younger and as lusty young Romans came to
affix their names to the stars for which earlier peoples
already had names. This grafting of Greek names, and
Roman ones on the planets, befogs the common mind, con-
veying to it the idea of precedence in discovery. It may
be that some future Chamberlain, rather than to allow the
honor of the discovery of Uranus, (which so long bore the
name of Herschell, its discoverer) to rest to the credit of
a Jew-descended scientist, may find a way of tracing a still
earlier acquaintance with this body to Greek, or Roman,
or Teuton.

This much we may be sure is reliable of all that oral
tradition and writings have brought down to us: that
science, coming from the East, the Jews had their laudable
part in developing it; that while that grandam of today's
science, Astrology, draped every new light that came with
superstition, the Jewish voice was the first of which we
have record, to protest against it. Isaiah, some 712 B. C
is both satirical and derisive in his attacks against the
star-gazers and astrologers whose counsel the weak in
faith seek. Look to them, he says scornfully; let them
now "stand up and save thee from those things that shall
come upon thee."

While the Chaldeans and Babylonians multiplied sup-
erstitions in connection with their observations of the stars,
and appear to have been content to rest there, the Jews,
essentially a people of contemplation, were seeking truth
through the revelations of the heavens. This is established
by Daniel who was one of the captive children brought
into Babylon with Jewish hosts by the victorious Nebu-

THE JEW IN MATHEMATICS; IN PHYSICS 209

chadnezzar about 600 B. C He says that this King sent
for a selected number of the bright children of the captive
people . . . "such as were skilful in knowledge and
who understood science", for the purpose of training them
in the Chaldean tongue. But this surely gives warrant
for thinking that he wished them to speak it also, in order
that he might learn the secrets of the Hebrew knowledge
and science. This testimony, rather than any other of the
time, proves that the Jews were advanced in these things,
else how might it happen that even the children of the race
were instructed in them ?'

The Roman Pythagarus was living at this time, of
whom we know extremely little and that all hearsay,
brought down orally, even as the Jews' traditions had been
carried down, by those who studied their teachers' wise
sayings. But in the next century writings begin, in every
direction. They are heard of as suddenly as books were,
after the discovery of printing nearly 2000 years later.
Nomadic wandering is superseded by planned travel and
observant travellers began to write down their impressions
of what they had seen and heard, and had learned from
the people and priests of strange lands. Herodotus comes
into view about this time. The history of astronomy,
which is called the mother of all sciences, begins to take
form here. Pythagoras is said to have taught and to have
been the first to recognize that the earth and the
planets turn about the central and immovable sun; but
from this time on scientific investigation would seem to
have languished, probably over-shadowed by the immense
development in commerce and conquest among the coun-
tries of that little ancient world. However, mathematical
studies were being carried on here and there throughout
that world, and though they are often involved with theo-
logical interests, yet wherever notable discovery occurred,
the Jew was near.

210 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

After Pythagoras, astronomy languished. Dr. John-
son says with his usual crispness that "the human mind
was not yet ready to receive his truths". The honor of
the revival of the science, as a thing of vital worth, belongs
to the Kings of Egypt, the Ptolomys, whose reigns have
left heritages to the present day which all civilized peoples
share. During those reigns mathematics, the science
which "contemplates whatever is capable of being num-
bered or measured", was developed, while Greece was still
measuring the divisions of the day by shadows. Proctor
tells us that Egypt and Mesopotamia are the places of all
others in which astronomical studies are to be made, since
the beauty alone of the heavens there was and is sufficient
to inspire worship and investigation. Layard has left some
rare descriptions of the Mesopotamian night skies. Proc-
tor believes that the Greeks, who so constantly admit their
indebtedness to the Egyptians in scientific matters, give
them an exaggerated reputation "largely because they
have always boasted that they were descended from them".
George M' Arthus says that "the sober belief of the Greeks
was that the sun was a torch which, with the stars was
lighted and extinguished daily.

From this Ptolemaic period it becomes difficult to
trace the Jewish part in scientific development, as it would
seem because they, too, were mingling in Roman and Gre-
cian life, and mathematicians who bear Hellenized or
Roman names, may well have had others of Hebraic form,
as was the custom of the day, and as it became an enforced
custom in the older European cities a thousand years
later. Fashion forced this in Alexandria as fanaticism
later compelled it in Spain and in Rome.

There were Jews in Greece when Aristotle taught;
when Euclid formulated his immortal rules on which
civilization has gone on building for twenty-two hundred
years; rules which, for the first time, we are told, are now

THE JEW IN MATHEMATICS; IN PHYSICS 211

being challenged by the recently advanced Einstein theory,
and which, if definitely proven, may be upset. Jews were
in Egypt and in favor there when Hyparchus, "the illustri-
ous founder of astronomical science, and Prince of As-
tronomers" attempted to catalogue the stars with a view
to observing the changes that might occur to them and in
their positions. They surely were about when Apollonius
advanced his theory of conic sections; and when Eratos-
thenes, that wonderful man, who, wearied of his long life,
deliberately starved himself to death at eighty-five, made
his remarkable measurement of the earth's size which
came within fifty miles of its true diameter, though geo-
graphical knowledge was still so rare and at best, vague.
That the Jew as a figure in scientific fields disappears
about this time and is seldom heard of for centuries, is
not at all strange. The dispersion of their people, in
70 A. D., followed by their wanderings in the East, prin-
cipally, and the settling of groups in Italy and in Spain;
and presently the settling over the European countries of
the shadows of The Dark Ages, blurs all scientific traces.
But, after all, it would seem to have been the Jews who
saved science to the later civilization that was to recreate
the old world. It is during this period, when the perplexed
fathers of the young Church repressed scientific investiga-
tion as a dark occupation likely to be at variance with their
revealed knowledge; when alchemy and numerous spuri-
ous spawns of the scientific thought of earlier ages ab-
sorbed the minds of men, that the Jews begin to take on
the character of middle-man, whether commercially or
intellectually, which so long distinguished them; and, pass-
ing to and fro among nations which offered small perma-
nent hospitality to them, they disseminated, as their
forefathers had done, knowledge of invaluable kind in the
sciences, for which everywhere, the serious were eager.

212 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

In opposition to the animadversions so persistently
heaped upon the Jews' enlightenment, it is interesting to
note a point made by R. A. Proctor. He says in the En-
cyclopedia Brittanica, that while India has been hailed as
the cradle of all sciences, and of astronomy, in particular,
there are other authorities, equally reliable, who maintain
that India got her arts and sciences originally, through the
visit of Pythagoras, made in the sixth century B. C But
he goes farther, and speaks of a third opinion, that exists,
in several reliable quarters, that astronomical knowledge
was probably carried into India in the ninth century of
our era; probably by the Arabs.

This was the period of Haroun al Raschid, when the
Jews, the Arab's kinsmen, are known to have been the
intermediaries between western Christianity and eastern
Mohammedanism. The more these times and the per-
sonalities of the times are examined into, the greater the
probability grows, that during them the Jews played a
great part in the founding in those days of the structure
on which modern astronomy was to rise. They brought
scientific works, in Arabic forms into the European ken,
and translated them for the Europeans. Toledo, Naples,
each held groups of Jewish scholars. Not for gain but
from pure love of learning they translated scientific, theo-
logical, and philosophical works of all lands.

Aristotle and other ancients reached Europe through
the Jews; and by common consent it is agreed that they
brought knowledge of the decimal system from Arabia,
and geometry from India. They brought into use the
astronomical tables of the Eastern peoples, and the knowl-
edge of map-making, together with medical knowledge
which was to be of vast service to the European world.
The Jewish translators of those days were benefactors in
a dark world, and rich men with a bent for knowledge,
took them, frequently tinder their protection, making sec-

THE JEW IN MATHEMATICS; IN PHYSICS 213

retary-authors of them. There is warrant in plenty for
stating that many of the greater translations of those days,
though they bore the names of non- Jewish scholars, in
fact were the work of erudite Jews.

Roger Bacon, who never balked at truth-telling
against those he did not like that great mathematician
who could, in the thirteenth century, deduce that in time
we should have "ships propelled without rowers . . ..
so that great ships, guided by one man may be borne with
greater speed than if they were full of men. Likewise
cars may be made so that without a draught animal they
may be moved with inestimable speed . . . and flying
machines, that a man may sit in the middle and by turning
a device fly like a bird "; Roger Bacon speaks of the
erroneous translations of his time, and says: "When a
great many translations on all kinds of knowledge have
been given us by Gerard of Cremona, Michael, the Scot,
Alfred, the Englishman, Hermann, the German, and
William, the Fleming, you cannot imagine how many blun-
ders occur on their works. Besides, they did not even
know Arabic. . . . Michael Scot claimed the merit
of numerous translations; but it is certain that Andrew,
a Jew labored at them more than he did, and so with the
rest"

Leonardo di Pisa, who founded his text-books on
Indian arithmetic, geometry, and trigonometry, did so
through the translations of John of Seville's "Algorism"
and Plato of Tivoli's "Liber Embadorium", both transla-
tors being Jews. Plato of Tivoli was one of the most im-
portant intermediaries between Mahommedan science and
the Christian world, and, in addition, the author of orig-
inal works on "The Form of the Earth"; a "Calculation
on the Courses of the Stars" ; and, among many others,
his "Book of Intercalation", which is accounted the oldest
Hebrew work on the calculation of the Calendar. This

214 THE JEW ANB CIVILIZATION*

was published in London, in 1851, about seven hundred
years after the decease of its author.

From this time on Jews are identified inextricably
with the progress of modern science. They had part,
at least, in the making of early astronomical tables.,
and were famous as instructors in mathematics and
astronomy. Tables of this character made by Zacuto,
a Portuguese Jew, written in Hebrew, but translated
into Spanish and Portuguese by a pupil of the author,
were carried by Columbus on his wonderful quest
for a Western short-cut to the East. Prescott says of
the Jews: 'Whatever may be said of their success in
speculative philosophy, they cannot reasonably be denied
to have contributed largely to practical and to experimen-
tal science 5 '; and, again, "We meet with Jewish scholars
and statesmen attached to the courts of Alfonso X, and
Alphonso XI; of Peter, the Cruel, Henry II and other
princes. Their astronomical science recommended them
in an especial manner to Alfonso the Wise, who employed
them in the construction of his celebrated tables. James I
of Aragon condescended to receive instruction from them
in ethics."

Levi ben Gerson, an astronomer and mathematician
of the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries, (he died in 1344)
and who is also known, as Leon de Bagnols, has been
called one of the most remarkable men of his time. He
is credited with having discovered the camera oscura, and
was the inventor of "Jacob's Staff", which served the
purpose of a quadrant to ascertain the right ascension of
the sun. This instrument was used by the noted naviga-
tors, Martin Behain, Vasco de Gama, Magellen and
Columbus, and its use continued until Hadley introduced
(in 1731) his Quadrant. A "Quadrant Judaicus" an im-
provement upon an invention by Robert the Englishman,

THE JEW IN MATHEMATICS; IN PHYSICS 215

and which was evolved by the Jew, Jakob ben Maker, was
long in use among mariners.

In Prague, associated so closely with historic events
and personages, the resting place of David Cans is a point
of interest to all Jewish visitors. Cans was one of the
first German Jews to become known as a scientist. He
translated for Tycho Brahe the famous Alfonsine tables
(from the Hebrew into German) and took part in the
observations made at the Prague Observatory by Brahe
and Keppler. He wrote valuable works on cosmography,
on geography and mathematics, and was among the en-
lightened scholars of a day which boasted Galileo and
Bacon, but Vhich, at the same time, opposed, fought, and,
where it could, reprobated the bolder scientific leaders.

Science was not then esteemed the blessing we now
know it to be. It held its own only by contesting for its
every step taken. Important enemies to it regarded it as
a too bold system of enquiry; a something contrary to God's
laws and to those of the theologies of the day. Roger
Bacon, and, indeed up to the days of Francis Bacon, many
scholars ventured to pursue their studies only under condi-
tions of the greatest secrecy; and to record their discov-
eries in codes and in anagrams calculated to balk inquisi-
torial searchers. But, despite this, modern science came
into being in the 16th century, and with but little to block its
way has gone on from triumph to triumph to the present.

In retrospect, and in considering their part in modern
progress whether as scientific teachers, or as translators
to the European world it would seem not possible not to
perceive in the Jew one of the primal forces that spurred
Copernicus (who made the first analysis of the movements
of the heavenly bodies), that guided Kepler and Galileo,
whose new science of dynamics was to produce such im-
portant results. Great discoverers the Jewish race did not
at once produce, but while Galileo worked in his observa-

216 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

tory, Jewish geographers were making authoritative books
on both mathematical geography and astronomy; medical
scientists were doing notable things, and in every field
thereafter, the Jewish scientist, even against great hin-
drances, political, religious, social and always fanatical,
begins to appear more and more frequently in the list of
those who have accomplished fine scientific deeds. As
chemists, as mathematicians, as physicists, as active
astronomers wherever the avenue is open, or to be opened
for the seeking of the "knowledge of causes and the secret
motion of things", there, today the Jew is to be found,
"standing upon the frontiers of human knowledge" and
looking into the unknown for a sight of that which their
eyes cannot yet see, but which mathematical calculation
tells them is there; for, as Lord Kelvin has said: "nearly
all the grandest discoveries of science have been but the
rewards of accurate measurement and patient, long-con-
tinued labor in the minute sifting of numerical results/*

It is nearing one hundred and fifty years since the son
of Jewish parents, William Herschell, who to that time
had been but the modest organist of a little chapel, electri-
fied the world with his discovery of the planet now known
as Uranus ancl was hailed by the scientists of that day, as
the most remarkable discoverer since Galileo. At once
raised to the post of astronomer of the British King,
HerscHell continued upon a course of unparalleled dis-
covery and opened wide worlds for those who were to
come after him.

A partial list o'f his "etfierial discoveries" shows tHat
Herschell fixed the positions of some twenty-five hundred
nebulae which, previously, were unloiown. He identified
two hundred and nine binary stars, of the existence of
whicfi none before him had suspected. He determined tfie
elements of Saturn more conclusively tfian any predeces-
sor, ancl was the first, as well, to show tHe relation of tKe

THE JEW IN MATHEMATICS; IN PHYSICS 217

Milky Way to the universe in general. "When William
Herschell discovered a new planet," some one has said,
"and this beyond the orbit of Saturn, he doubled the
boundaries of the solar systems known to even his most
notable predecessors. All the activity of his race seemed
concentrated in him in his pursuit of the astronomical
mysteries,"

At the time of this wonderful occurrence, general in-
terest in astronomy and in science at large can scarcely
have been great, for Johnson's dictionary, a fairly enter-
prising piece of work, dismisses both magnetism and elec-
tricity with the briefest possible comment, saying: "Philos-
ophers are now endeavoring to intercept the strokes of
lightning."

Since Herschell, an army of notable Jews have made
their names known in the most important departments of
science, among them Ricardo, in mathematics, early in the
last century, and James Joseph Sylvester, whose influence
in the development of mathematical science rests primarily
upon his investigations of the "Theory of Variants"*
Three men in the last half of the nineteenth century
have been ranked as mathematical geniuses, Sylvester, his
friend and co-worker, Cayley, and Hamilton. To non-
scientific students the theory of variants may seem
abstruse and aside from the common needs of life; so, too,
does an analysis of the air ; yet, to the initiated scientist, who
seeks the fundamentals, Sylvester's accomplishment ranks
with those of the highest importance. Speaking of it Mac-
mahon says : "The theory of invariants sprang into exist-
ence under the strong hand of Cayley, but that it emerged
finally, a complete work of art for the admiration of future
generations of mathematicians, was largely owing to the
flashes of inspiration with which Sylvester's intellect
illuminated it."

The University of Cambridge was obliged to withhold

218 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

from Sylvester his degree, because, as a Jew, he could not
subscribe to articles at variance with his faith, though
Cambridge, as one has said, was his "natural intellectual
home"; but this circumstance carried him to Johns Hop-
kins, where, for seven or more years he was a notable
light among a distinguished faculty. Reckoned among the
mathematical giants of modern times, Sylvester topk^thfi
Copley prize in 1880, and at his demise was a member oi
the most serious and progressive scientific associations of
the world. Thereafter, the Royal Society established in
his memory, the Sylvester triennial prize. This is but one
of many instances of the non- Jewish world conferring
post-mortem honors upon Jews, who, through life have
met with a cold tolerance, when an encouraging sympathy
was due them. Nothing raises the Jewish man of science
so high as his power to proceed upon his studious way and
to press toward his high calling, notwithstanding the blows
which the narrow and ignorant, and the prejudiced deal
him; but it is none the less deplorable that, in the. face of
the moral heroism of the Jewish race, displayed again and
again in every generation, that non- Jews, beneficiaries the
while of his work, should continue to perpetuate prejudices
which is more degrading to those who sow it than to
those who are the victims of it. To return to the Jew in
science :

A predecessor of Sylvester's, ^Qn^Jafiofei, was not
only a discoverer of note in his day he discovered, among
other things, galvanoplasty, a method of coating metals by
galvanism, which has had a large commercial value since
it has entered even into the making of kitchen-ware of
our own generation , but also a prolific writer on the
topic of galvanism, in association with machines ; on gal-
vanism and electro-magnetism and their application to the
operation of machines.

Otto Wallach, who has but recently passed, was a

THE JEW IN MATHEMATICS; IN PHYSICS 219

notable figure among organic chemists. None in his day
has to his credit more valuable findings in the chemical
field. His work on terpenes, and camphor, its related sub-
stance, is appraised as a classical example of chemical
research. The list of men of the Jewish race of the last
century alone who have added, by invention or discovery
in the scientific field, to the enlargement of knowledge, and
to the improvement of comfort in life, is far too great for
commensurate attention here.

Science, year after year, "is busy", as Dr. Faunce has
said, "in dissolving matter into more spiritual forms";
and, he might have added, in seeking to bring into visibil-
ity, that which in previous eras, has been the invisible, the
unattainable ; and none of all who have pursued her secrets
make a greater sh.owing than do the Jews. Herschell
revealed a universe that had been undreamed of in the his-
tory of the human race. Beer, in the first half of last cen-
tury, from his own observatory, penetrated unknown
secrets of Mars, and made out the landmarks on the moon.
With an associate, Maedler, he made a map of that orb
which today is consulted and relied upon. Look where
you will, however, you will find valuable scientific contribu-
tions by the Jews. Gabriel Lippmann invents the capillary
electro-meter, and besides, numerous instruments in con-
nection with photography, writes valuable works on
Optics and Acoustics, and serves as professor of Experi-
mental Physics at the Sorbonne.

Qn^oi^the most pathetic figures in the Jiistqrjr^of
science js that af^toXMH^

in his AlTatioui Invl^tbT^^szidi^Hep&ved the way for
the realization of the flying machine as we know it today.
He built a machine comprising a rudder and wings . . .
with which he indulged in sailing flights. He approached
the problem from the severely scientific point of view, dis-
covering new facts and new data for himself. . . . , By

220 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

starting from an artificial hill one hundred feet in height
he was able to sail over distances up to one thousand feet.
. . . While testing a new steering apparatus which he
had designed, he fell from a height of forty-five feet, broke
his spine and died from the effects of it in August, 1896.
. . A, M Herring, while associated with Octave
Chanut of Chicago, built an exact copy of Lilienthal's
machine within a month after the inventor's death, and
made a hundred successful glides with it; but, he gave up
the machine as being, perhaps too dangerous, Chanut",
Mr. Talbot continues, interested in the Wright Brothers'
experiments, "extended the fruits of his experience to the
Wrights" while they were at work upon their gliding
machines."

With the University of Chicago, presiding over the
Department of Physics, Albert A. Michelson, one of the
greatest scientific figures of his age has been identified for
thirty years. Very early in his career Professor Michel-
son's abilities began to declare themselves by his search
into the methods of improving the determination of light.
The Morley-Michelson experiments in this field are land-
marks in the progress of modern science. They not only
fixed this scientist in history, but brought him to the atten-
tion of the contemporaneous scientific world which, in a
few years was to name him "the foremost scientist of
America". It would seem to be Michelson 5 s star-measur-
ing feats which called forth a line of flippant contempt
from Mr. Ford's author.

Professor Michelson might fitly be called the wizard
of the air. How else, indeed, may we describe the mind
that sets out to determine such impalpable problems as to
whether there is ether in space, and to determine the value
of "certain interference" means of measuring that which,
to the eye of ninety-nine out of every hundred, is not?
Michelson has succeeded by this same "interference method

THE JEW IK MATHEMATICS; IN PHYSICS 22ft

of measurement 35 in ascertaining the diameter of a star
three hundred times larger than the sun : the great Betel-
guese, of the Orion constellation. Nor has he stopped
there. He has measured, as well, the diameter of Antares,
in the Scorpio group, which is now found to be some four
hundred and twenty million miles ; or larger, by one-third
than Betelguese. The first great astronomer citizen of the
Western hemisphere, Michelsonjis also one of the five
American recipients of the Nobel prize~ the^otKerTSeing
Messrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, Woodrow Wil-
son, and Alexis Carrel.

As each new ascent in knowledge is made possible by
the plane attained by our predecessors, so it has been said
that the Morley-Michelson experiments are the starting-
point whence arises the Einstein theories on Equivalents
and Relativity, which latest discovery of the Jewish mind,
though yet to be proven, have been greeted by the scien-
tists of the age as "probably the most profound and far-
reaching application of mathematics to the phenomena of
the material universe that the world has ever known" ; one
which "takes us behind our present ideas about space, time
and matter to the primitive reality out of which we have
built up those ideas". Professor Thomson says Mr. Wells
had a pretty clear idea of it all before Einstein's theory
appeared; but, he adds, Einstein takes us a big step far-
ther. He asked a question which nobody had asked before
him : "Is the space and time interval which separates two
events the same for everybody"?

It has been said that Albert Einstein was introduced
to mathematics through an uncle, an engineer, to whom
the youth propounded the question: "What is algebra"?
"Algebra", the uncle is said to have replied, "is the calcu-
lous of indolence. If you do not know a certain quantity,
you call it x and treat it as if you do know it; then you put
down the relationship given and determine x later." Out

222 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

of this grew the interest of the young student (until then
described as a dreamer), which today has set the world of
science agog; which threatens to overturn the mathematics
that have stood the test of twenty-three hundred years,
and to relegate Euclid and all that he stood for into what
Mr. Cleveland so picturesquely described as "innocuous
desuetude".

The Einstein Theory, while still, in part, under ex-
periment, nevertheless has already solved problems that
had worried great mathematicians for generations. To
test it, England sent out an important expedition, for the
purpose of photographing the stars whose light passed
near the sun, when it was in eclipse. The "Theories"
stood the test; more, strikingly verified them. "Einstein's
Theory", say the editors of "The Outline of Science",
shows, further, "that there is something in the nature of
an ultimate entity in the universe" though even yet we
know nothing intelligible about it; but, these authorities
believe it will presently be made clear through the Einstein
discoveries that the whole universe has been . . .
created by the .mind itself.

To what insignificant proportions do fanatical critics
shrink before the blaze of scientific accomplishment which
haloes the modern Jew, and this, not alone because of his
exploration of the spaces of the sky, not alone for setting
back of the horizon to take in undreamed of worlds, but
because, too, great men of the race, regardless alike of
fame, and of profit, work on in the secret quiet of "Sci-
ence's holy cell", seeking tirelessly and often finding
panaceas for the relief of humanity's ills !

But, great as are the findings of the race in the
broader fields of physics, to the individual they are of less
instant value than are the mysteries of life which chemists,
physicians and other scientists of the race may be credited
with. At these, too, we will now glance.

CHAPTER XII
The Jew in Medicine

"The Jews cannot reasonably be denied to Iiave
contributed largely to practical (wd experimental
science. They were diligent travellers in all parts af
the known world, compiling itineraries which have
proved of extensive use in later times . . . bring*
ing home hordes of foreign specimens wd Oriental
drugs, that furnished important contributions to the
domestic pharmacopoeia^. In the practice of medi~
cine, ind'eed, ttiey became so expert, as in a manner
to monopolise that profession!'

WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT.
(In "The Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella")

IN the past fifty years alone thousands of books have
been written and printed that purport to record the
history of the human family, many of which specialize on
the world's progress in this or that particular field; but
if you are a careful reader, and are seeking knowledge,
let us say, in connection with the Jew's part in it, you will
be amazed, as you turn the leaves of a work by this or that
"authority" even those whose reputations might recom-
mend them as fair-minded, to observe the scant mention,
and this grudging, or derogatory, in connection with the
discoveries and contributions of the race in the field of
medicine. This has been admitted by one of the most
recent Anti-Semites to disseminate his evil suggestions
among the reading public. He goes so far as to say:
'We dare not or will not teach in our history books the
plain facts of the relations between our race and the Jews.
We throw the story of these relations in the background/'
To prove the truth of this confession, you have only
to cast your glance back to the schoolbooks from which
you were taught history. With the exception of a book

223

224 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION*

here and there which tells that the Jews crucified Jesus,
and were from that time on the objects of persecutions,
the authors have not "dared" or wished to apply the prin-
ciples advanced by Jesus, of considering the Jew as a fel-
lowman and a brother. Such historians as have not been
willing to appear as uninformed allude to them, but, gen-
erally speaking, they have hastened over the topic as
negligible, unless, by chance, they have happened upon
some reprehensible thing of which some member of this
long-tortured race has been guilty. Then they have let
down the floodgates of their eloquence, though "It is a
poor and pusillanimous sport," as Mr. David Lloyd
George has declared in his recent book. But the work
goes on, and will go on undoubtedly until people think for
themselves; until they examine into the spiritual cre-
dentials of those who would saddle every new generation,
whether by carelessness or design, with the hatreds and
malice of past and ignorant ages.

This system of elimination of the Jew extends even
to the field of modern scientific writings. A recent work
of two volumes which deals with medicine and science,
solely overlooks the participation of this people in both
lines, though it devotes innumerable pages to Hippocrates,
who, the author notes, "knew so little of physiology that
he did not know a vein from an artery; nor could he dis-
tinguish a tendon from a nerve." Yet there is every
evidence that in the Biblical times in those times in
which the Scriptures were first assembled, which preceded
Hippocrates by a hundred or more years Jews were at
least enquiring into and observing physiological facts, and
concerning themselves with the very questions that today
occupy the scientific mind, namely, of how to prolong
life, how to improve health, and to assuage pain, and this
not by magic, or by pagan rites, but by their laws
of health. This is revealed in Exodus, Leviticus, and

THE JEW IN MEDICINE 225

Deuteronomy. These laws may not be set aside as some-
thing borrowed from the Greeks or the Babylonians who
had not yet appeared in any notable instance, as physi-
cians or law-makers.

We have, on the other hand, corroborative evidence
that very important dietary laws were understood and
obeyed by even the Jewish children, who astonished the
learned in Babylon by their adherence to them. The case
of Daniel again may be cited to illustrate this. He was one
of the four children selected by the officers of Nebuchad-
nezzar, who were to be fattened at the King's table and
afterwards instructed in Chaldean. Though he was lean
as were the others, captives in the city, yet Daniel "would
not defile himself with the King's meat/' He seems to
have caused considerable discussion; but, ultimately he
was given permission to demonstrate that a simple diet
would nourish him better than the King's varied table.
When, after ten days* experiment on a diet of pulse and
water, the children were brought into the King's presence,
he was astonished at their fair countenances and clear
minds; for, "in all matters of wisdom and understanding
... he found them ten times better than all the magi-
cians and astrologers that were in the realm/'

Today, when science has unlocked so many secrets
concerning the human body though life itself, and the
mystery of it, as Sir Oliver Lodge has pointed out, even
that of the common housefly, still eludes her we know
the body to be a physical and chemical system, an animal
organism which the scientists regard as a mechanical
marvel. The metaphysician knows that back of all this
marvel is the still more marvellous mind; that the state
of this mind makes or mars the condition of the physical
body; yet nearly three thousand years ago the Jewish
fathers knew it and proclaimed in their proverbs that: "a
merry heart doeth good like medicine." Herbert Spencer

226 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

merely proclaims this truth anew when he tells us that
laughter at meals aids digestion.

Who really searches these Scriptures, doing so not
in a spirit of seeking to find support for a concept and
opinion already definitely established on accepted precepts
those accepted without enquiry those who seek in the
spirit of unprejudiced desire to know the right, cannot
fail to be amazed at the manner in which the knowledge
possessed by those early Jewish people tallies with or fore-
shadows that of today. For example, nowhere in their
book will you find such remedies as the learned Greeks of
two and even three hundred years later were still resort-
ing to in their treatment of the sick. Galen notes (as one
instance) a way of making "digestive oils" by boiling
whole foxes and hyenas, alive or dead, in oil: and if he
and Pliny may be taken literally, Xenocrates and others
employed commonly the practice of blending human blood
and entrails in the manufacture of their medicines. The
probability is for it became a proverb that when Hippoc-
rates said "Yes" Galen said "No" that Hippocrates
approved these cures, since Galen did not.

Galen had been rated as the greatest anatomist of
antiquity; very recently, at a Congress of Medical sciences
met in London, his knowledge of muscular anatomy was
gravely discussed. But glance through the Jewish writ-
ings, book after book, and you will meet with a surprising
succession of references to the human anatomy, made
generations before Galen's time, which point conclusively
to the Jew as being already an observant physician; which
show that he was able to identify and to study human
organs and their illnesses, and that he knew and sanely
applied sane remedies. It is true that in the later Jewish
writings occasional cures are described that are but a
trifle less absurd than those devised by the learned
Greeks; but as these are not recorded or hazarded

THE JEW IN MEDICINE 227

by Jews until after their intermingling with the Greeks, it
would seem at least a fair conjecture, a reasonable one
that evil communications had corrupted the Jews' better
understanding and obscured their earlier light. On the
other hand it may also register a spirit of liberal desire on
their part (for which they have never had credit) to
investigate and not reject without experiment, the ideas
which other nations were acting upon, Maimonides
showed this breadth of spirit fifteen hundred years later
when he drew on some of the early theories of Galen,
which had to do with the more perfect production of the
species ; but he drew only from the most rational and not
from those which the simplest today must smile at, as
worthy of the deepest and darkest ages of mankind.

Galen was a great man in his generation. He lived
when scribes were numerous and easily available for the
recording of the results of his researches. He was, as
someone has said, seventeen centuries ahead of his time;
yet he believed in the efficacy of the blood of a bedbug to
remove the hairs of the eyebrows, which many, in his day
considered as disfiguring, and sought to get rid of.
Bayard Taylor in his famous trip to the east, noted the
plucked eyebrow as a standard of beauty which still ob-
tained there in the middle of last century.

"To stop a cough/' one of Galen's prescriptions reads,
"wear the tongue of an eagle as an amulet" Was a
cure necessary for a sty on the eye? "Catch flies/' wrote
that great physician of the Greeks, "cut off their heads
and rub the sty with the rest of their bodies. "A cooked
black chameleon/' he adds, "performs the double duty of
curing a toothache and killing mice/'

Pliny left records as worthless; but Galen, Hippo-
crats, Pliny all those ancients left layers of worth-while
observations on which future medical men were to travel
farther and farther. The weaknesses of those early

228 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

investigators are laughable, but who laughs at them?
Their strength, their successful investigations are dwelt
upon, and properly, by medical and general historians, as
landmarks in scientific progress. The opposite course,
however, definitely, clearly and deliberately is followed by
all but the most occasional historian when it comes to
facts that connect the Jew with this progress. Neverthe-
less, he, too, is honorably identified with it at every step.
As the laborer is worthy of his hire, so, too, must it be
acknowledged that to the Jew belongs credit for his part
in the dissemination of knowledge of medical science and
of general knowledge even, while the Dark Ages were
silencing the voices of Greece and Rome. The Jew was
the first to be identified with the colleges and hospitals
established by the Califs of Asia Minor in the seventh
century, and, as will have been seen, was at least an assist-
ing force in translating into European tongues such Greek
and Hebrew lore as was available. Nor should it be over-
looked that their ancient Scriptures, at that time known
to all scholars, but through the Greek, mainly, were con-
sidered as Greek documents by many non-Jews. Because
of those peculiar conditions many things that would seem
to have belonged to the Jews, of right, have somehow
changed hands.

The Arabs are credited with the translations of Galen
and Hippocrates which lie back of all European medical
practice up to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; but
there were many Arabian Jews, and many translators and
scholars among them, and they were teachers, passing on
their knowledge then as the race does today. If the un-
friendly eye may build his propositions against the Jew
upon suppositions, and probabilities, the truthseeker, avail-
ing himself of the same privilege, will be warranted in
assuming that the dividing line between the Jewish and

THE JEW IN MEDICINE 229

the Arabian Light-bringers of those days is extremely
hazy.

Among that Eastern culture, the Jews had a short
period of prosperity and peace, but their fate, even under
Haroun-al-Raschid, was to teach others, to bring the
schools of Bagdad to a flourishing condition, and then to
be thrust out of the position they had filled, to make way
for their pupils, and begin again elsewhere. Their first
restrictions came when they were prohibited from teach-
ing any but Jews. Next, they were restricted to the prac-
tice of medicine among their own race ; but soon we come
upon an edict prohibiting them even from studying medi-
cine. As a result, the highly gifted among the race were
soon wending their way westward toward Arab Spain
where the young schools of Toledo, Seville, and Cordova
were just coming into existence.

Jewish scholars also made their way, but in fewer
numbers, to the Italian cities, and to those of northern
Europe, and from this time on they are heard of as teachers
or as practicing physicians in all the western centres of
learning. Medical and scientific writings of that period
are still extant from the pen of Isaac Israeli, a notable
Jewish physician and oculist who left many pupils and
descendants who were later to attain a high standing in
the medical activities of their day, Israeli served the
Fatimite Calif at Kairwan as personal physician. His
work on fevers, like those of- the later Maimonides (on
foods and on diet generally) , were long current in Latin
form, and are still consulted by the curious in medical lore.
The names of many scientific and scholastic Jews of those
and succeeding centuries have been lost owing to the com-
pulsory change of faith (which was accompanied by a
change of name, also), which so often took place at a
time when there was practically no choice between this
act and the most cruel persecution. Comparatively re-

230 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

cently a non- Jewish medical historian has identified Aven-
zoar, theretofore listed as an Arabian, as a Jew; but Jew-
ish authorities, even more conscientious, find no ground
for accepting him, notwithstanding the distinction which
attaches to his name,

A few such leading names as Israeli, Maimonides, and
Levi ben Gerson represent the truly scientific seekers for
truth who may be identified between the ninth and the
sixteenth centuries and all of these are associated with
medical practice. Ordinary doctoring by non- Jews as well
as Jews, was a matter of healing through the fantastic
prescriptions of the ancients; through magical brews.
Much of it was in the hands of "leeches," who appear
frequently to have combined the functions of barber,
apothecary and physician. It was not until the sixteenth
century that the medical scholars, perceiving medicine to
be a real and not (as it was then rated) a pseudo-science,
succeeded by bringing pressure upon the governments, in
establishing a better standard. The more highly equipped
Jewish physicians at this time were found in attendance
upon potentates, in the east and in the west. While these
and the Popes, as well, were continually issuing decrees
restricting the activities of the Jews as a people, neverthe-
less a great number of them retained Jews as their per-
sonal physicians a singular testimony to the complete
trust reposed in their skill, but, above all, in their
integrity.

Romance and drama associate themselves with the
careers of many of the Jewish physicians of the Middle
Ages. You will come upon stories of potentates com-
pelling them to administer poison to those of whom such
royal persons would be rid without incriminating a Chris-
tian in the unholy deed; and of others, who, summoned to
do the miraculous in the healing of a king, have lost their
heads for their incapacity to do it. They were unques-

THE JEW IN MEDICINE 231

tionably skilful in the chemistry of their day, and there is
no reason to doubt, since it was a merciful act, that they
sometimes prepared such draughts as Friar Laurence per-
suaded Juliette to drink. They had a hand, at least, in the
making of the cosmetics and unguents which the fashion-
able beauties are said to have used so lavishly in the
Middle Ages; for of these and the secrets of perfume-
making they had known in the East.

It has been noted that practically all the luxuries en-
joyed in Europe in the ninth, tenth and so on to the four-
teenth centuries were brought there by Jewish travellers.
This was not only true in the case of fine stuffs for the
fashioning of wearing apparel, but especially so in the case
of drugs. Syrups, nitre, cubebs, borax and alum, senna
and laudanum, camphor and medicinal mercury, mace and
musk, aloes and asafetida, and innumerable remedies
known today in every family pharmacopoeia were practic-
ally unknown in the early Middle Ages, to any but the most
progressive medical practitioners. These are the little
things, which meant so much, however, for which the
modern world is indebted to the wisdom and enterprise
of the Jew. They were introduced by him when his every
step was opposed and rendered difficult by sporadic perse-
cutions, begun, often in mere cruel caprice but ending
only too frequently in tragic suffering for him.

Among the Jewish physicians whose names are
associated with what may be called the pre-scientific
period of the modern world, Bonet de Latis may be noted.
When his people were expelled from Provenge in the last
part of the fifteenth century, he was called to Rome to
attend Leo X, whose personal physician he became. He
had there an opportunity which he seized, of stoutly de-
fending his people during some especially cruel times for
them, and which are designated in history as the Pfeffer-
korn persecutions. Jacob Mantino was physician to Pope

232 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

Paul III. He appears to have been a diplomat as well as
medical man, for he acted as ambassador, on behalf of
Charles V at Venice.

From fifteen hundred on, the list grows of important
members of the Jewish medical world. They are to be
found in every Court in Europe, generally serving the
King and sometimes able, because of the esteem which
their worth had brought them, to alleviate the condition
of their people. Marie dei Medici was attended by Elias
Montalto, for whom she held such high regard that at
his death, she had his body embalmed and sent to Holland
where he had desired to be buried. They tell a story of
Francois I, who, though debarring Jewish physicians from
practicing in France, nevertheless when ill insisted upon
being treated by one.

In Germany, where very few Jewish physicians
appear to have practiced previous to the sixteenth cen-
tury, these and their successors appear earliest in what
approximates to an actual scientific study of medicine.
They were receiving college degrees in 1700, but not,
however, without experiencing many difficulties in attain-
ing them. Frederick William prohibited them from prac-
ticing without diplomas, and thereafter hostility erected
innumerable barriers to prevent their securing them.
Pamphlets by the Belloc and Chamberlains et al of those
days,^ protested indefatigably against admitting Jews to
practice. These more or less seriously retarded Jewish
medical progress for a century. Nevertheless none of
Germany's native-born sons have added more glory to
her scientific history in the past hundred years than those
of Jewish race or derivation.

The first Jewish physician to be allowed to fill the
position in Prussia of privat-docent (lecturer or teacher,
but not upon the regular paid staff), was Robert Remak,
who was already famous for his discoveries in electro-

THE JEW IN MEDICINE 233

therapy, embryology and neurology. Since his time monu-
ments have been raised in Germany to physicians of his
race, and a hundred names shine out among the scientific
lights o the present age; Ludvng_Ti:auhe "Father of
Experimental Pathology" was one of the first practi-
tioners of his time and left a legacy to the medical world
of valuable monographs on thermometry, digitalis, and
diseases of the lungs. Karl Wdggrt, also a pathologist,
and one of the faculty 'oFTeTpsic University, made dis-
coveries of value and wrote much upon the subject of the
staining of bacteria in microscopy.

Julius Bernstein, whose day is scarcely passed, was a
noted anatomist and physiologist, and not only has written
valuable works on the nervous and muscular systems, but
also presided over the Physiology interests at Halle
University.

The brothers Richard Liebmch, in ophthalmology,
and Oskar M. E. Liebreich, distinguished throughout the
medical worfd^forlKe inany new remedies he has added to
the modern pharmacopoeia, have done conspicuous good
to the human race in their time. Bicbard Liebreich, long
associated with St. Thomas' Hospital irTC^^S^^fhad^ a
special study of the influence of school-life on the eyesight,
and invented two opthalmoscopes which are in universal
use, besides improving upon certain inventions of Helm-
holtz. Oskar discovered^ the . ..aatacotic.. effect of ,,ctilpral
hydrate, and demonstrated the anaesthetic effects of
ethylene chlorid and butyl chlorid. He introduced platin-
iridium cannulas for the hyperdermic syringe, and the use
of hydrargyrum in the treatment of syphilis. The healing
properties of lanolin, since become a household remedy,
were discovered by him in 1885. Nor do these begin to
number his many discoveries; creosol, tolig^rm, fgn&st
line, metheline blue and many drugs now regarded as

234 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

indispensable in medical practice are due to his research
and experiment.

Benedikt Stilling, whose medical researches were
made in every country and in almost every University of
Europe, and who became celebrated as one of the first
anatomists and surgeons of his day, was one of the first
to introduce ovariotomy into Germany. His writings on
the nervous system, and its central organs, especially the
brain, which are rated as standard works, brought him
honors from the French Institute.

The city of Frankfort-on-Main, famous for the
number of unusual financiers she has produced, has been
no less remarkable for sons gifted in medicine. Among
them is Albert Frankel, nephew of Ludwig Traube, and,
like him, notablelri experimental pathology. Moriz Schiff,
from the same city, a leading biologist of last century,
occupied the chair of physiology at the Institute di Studii
Superior! at Florence and afterward a similar chair at the
University at Geneva. He collaborated with Lucien Bona-
parte on a work on South American fauna, and ranked
high as an authority on the construction of the nerves.

Wherever the Jewish scientist is found there a
teacher is to be found, following in this twentieth century
the same course his forbears followed, of passing on his
knowledge. Moriz^Benedikt, a Hungarian neurologist,
occupied the chair of neurology at the University of
Vienna. A master in electrotherapy as well, he became
famous throughout the medical circles of the world for
his many-sided abilities, and was a notable pioneer in
modern criminology. Many of his works have come
through into English, notably his studies of the brains of
criminals.

D^Ct^TfiLombTOso was one of the most dazzling
medical figures of last century. Known to the non-pro-
fessional English-speaking peoples principally through

THE JEW IN MEDICINE 235

his "Man of Genius/' to the medical world his meaning
was vastly greater. From him, as an authority on crim-
inology, a Lombroso School rose for the study of crime
and criminals, many of the students of which have
attained great fame, in some instances to world-wide
renown, such as Ferrero, Enrico Ferri, Zerboglio,
Carrara, etc., etc.

Lpmbrosa began his career as Professor at the Pavia
University, where he taught without pay for some years,
finally attaining a second professorship which yielded him
the munificent salary of $400 a year. Throughout his
teaching career he suffered extreme want, and often went
without the very necessaries of life; yet he added to the
opportunities for study which the University offered by
observations in a nearby insane asylum to which he also
gave his services gratuitously. While he was still a stu-
dent, he was writing on the insanity of the ancients, and
making his deductions as to the relation between insanity
and genius. He deduced two theories with which his
name is associated; the first, that genius is a "peculiar
psychical form of larvate epilepsy;" and, second, that
"there is a degenerate class of human beings^&stinguished
by anatomical and psychical characteristics, who are born
with criminal instincts, and who represent a reversion to
a very primitive form of humanity."

This Jewish physician, however, performed a greater
service for humanity in a very different department of
science. While at Pavia, he_^de^a M Stady^jaf pelagra,
a peculiar skin-disease which long had ravaged the people
of Northern Italy. He discovered its source. It was the
result of eating mouldy corn, the only available food for
the agricultural poor of the land. He no sooner made the
results of his investigations known, however, than all the
rich landowners in that part of the country rose against
him, viciously. Their purses being threatened, they repre-

236 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

sented to the Government that Lombroso was a mad man
and demanded his removal from the University of Pavia.
Years afterward, Lombroso's theories were adopted by
the medical fraternity the world over.

Another psychiatrist, Max Leidesdorf, of Austria,
who made a study of many yearTTn IKe Insane asylums
of that country, was regarded as the leading alienist of
his time. He was one of the medical group to examine
into the mental condition of the dethroned Murad, and,
later, into that of Louis II of Bavaria. He is an authority
whom authorities quote.

To do even scant justice in listing the debt of civili-
zation to the scientific Jew would be a gigantic task.
Gabriel ,G. Valentin, long a leading pathologist of Europe,
left notable works on the circulation of the blood; on toxi-
cology; on digestion; and on the electricity of muscles and
nerves. Gluge, a Belgian by adoption, was one of the
first physicians to examine the diseased tissues of the body
under the microscope. In special microscopic researches
he discovered a curious parasite in fish which thereafter
was given the name of Glugec^ ^\qrosp^a.

JuljusjCc^hgim, of "Cohnheim's areas" fame, who,
until his death was professor of pathology in the Univer-
sity of Leipsic, was the first to use the now "universally
applied idea of freezing fresh pathological objects for
examination." He was the first, also, to demonstrate
"nerve determination" in "Cohnheim's areas." Cohnheim
began his career with Virchow, He was a pioneer in
applying the "theory of inflammation" which now is gen-
erally accepted, but which new departure was the result
of his researches in the field of pathological circulation
and the causes of embolism.

Haffking of Calcutta, famous as a bacteriologist;
Marc See, Lucian Dreyfus-Brisac, Gabriel Lippmann
and Max Nordau, all of Paris; Salmonson, of Copen-

THE JEW IN MEDICINE 237

hagen; Arnold Pick and Siegmund Meyer, of Prague;
Richard Willstater, occupying the chair of chemistry at
the University of Munich and winner of the Nobel prize
for his researches into the chemistry of chlorophyll;
Robert Barany, of Vienna, and Paul Ehrlich, of Berlin,
winners, both, of the Nobel prize for medicine what a
list in this department of human achievement alone, to
refute, to contradict the statements so insistently reit-
erated by our literary Jewbaiters of today! "The Jews
have never achieved anything at all in any field of human
knowledge or activity/' So Mr. Chamberlain has written.
The layman, it is said, links the name of

'with his famous "606," an arsenical cure for a dread
disease; but this is but the climax of a long career of
valuable medical "finds" for which practically every gov-
ernment in Europe has honored him. But, it is unneces-
sary, after all, to go abroad for examples to prove the
work that has been and is being done by Jewish physi-
cians, Jewish men of medical science, who have con-
tributed and are contributing greatly to the welfare of
the new world. One of the first physicians to practice in
the United States was Jacob Lumbroso, who set up his sign

J ...... .... **,** rrr "*** 7 r

in Maryland in 1639. He is said to have been the only
Jew of that quiet little Maryland group of whose faith
there is indubitable proof, and who furnished the nucleus
for all knowledge that exists concerning the early Jewish
settlers in that State. Practically every Jewish community
after his time had its own physician. We may not here
stay to trace those earlier medical men, who, in all proba-
bility were obliged, as were the Rabbis, to add to their
incomes in other than professional ways.

In the last century America's Jewish physicians have
risen to positions as lofty as any in the world. They have
been second to none in their activities that have to do with
the public welfare, scientific research and progress. Many

238 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

have achieved a world reputation. Many fill the chairs of
Pathology, Chemistry, Bacteriology, Hygiene, and so on
in the leading Universities of the United States and
Canada. There are today approximately one hundred
and thirty scientists of this race in the United States and
these of first quality, who are devoting their skill to the
investigation of such scientific branches as zoology, horti-
culture, anthropology, hygiene; some ninety chemists, and
about one hundred and sixty physicians and surgeons,
besides numerous earnest workers who have not yet done
the thing that takes them above their fellows.

One of the most interesting figures in the medical
history of New York was the late Dr. Abraham Jacobi
who, in himself, was a living denial of the' many denuncia-
tions that are hurled against the passionate young Jew
in foreign lands. There, under goadings and lashings
which cannot be understood in these United States of
America, he has been in rebellion against the legalized
cruelties which again and again his race is called upoii
to endure, we hear of him only as a rebel. Were Dr.
Jacobi to arrive in America today, someone would be
pretty sure to attempt to bar him from landing, on the
score of two years spent in prison, on the charge of high
treason. Yet he was but twenty-three years old when he
came to New York where he was destined to rise to the
Presidency of the Academy of Medicine, and to become
one of the best loved as well as most famous physicians of
his time. His studies in Europe had been interrupted by
his participation in those revolutionary uprisings in which
half of the young men of his time were involved; but upon
his arrival in America he at once entered upon a course
in the New York Medical College, where he shortly is
found holding a professorship in the children's depart-
ment This he retained until he went to the College of
Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, in 1870,

THE JEW IN MEDICINE 239

where he remained for twenty-two years. Dr. Jacobi was
the great authority of his time on the therapeutics, of chil-
dren and left important works on this topic.

Dr. Carl Koller, the opthalmic surgeon, long asso-
ciated with Mt Sinai Hospital in New York, has won a
permanent place among the great discoverers in medical
science, by the introduction (in 1884) of cocaine as a local
anaestKetic in eye operations. This feat, which led to the
general adoption of local anaesthesia in operations in prac-
tically every branch of surgery, has been adjudged one
of the most merciful blessings conferred upon mankind in
recent years.

There are Jewish medical scientists established in
many parts of the United States whose reputation is coun-
try-wide; Dr. Bernard Sachs, alienist and neurologist, of
Baltimore; Dr. Milton Joseph Rosep^^ Sanitarian, who
is Professor of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene at Har-
vard Medical School and director of the School of Public
Health of Harvard University. Medical progress on the
western coast has been promoted by Dr. Abrams, a widely
valued pathologist of San Francisco. Professor Jacques
Lpeb, at the head of the division of general physiology at
the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research since 1910,
is a world medical figure, as is Dr. Simon JFlexner, an
American-born Jewish physician, formerly of Kentucky,
and today director of the laboratories of the Rockefeller
Institute. Dr. Flexner attained great fame in connection
with his monographs on Infantile Paralysis and on the
serum treatment of Epidemic Meningitis.

Nor does this, by any means, exhaust the list of
Jewish contributions to the physical well-being of the
modern world in this and other scientific departments.
The Jews have been taxed with lack of participation in
the agricultural problems of the present. Let us loot
next into this complaint, and see how it tallies with f acts.

CHAPTER XIII
The Jew in Agriculture

" f So far from the colonies and colonists [in Pales-
tine] draining the countries of its resources, they
have created resources which were previously non-
existent; they have planted and skilfully cultivated
desert sands and converted them into fruitful vine-
yards and orange and lemon orchards; in other parts
they have created valuable agricultural land out of
what were previously dismal swamps producing but
diseases. They have not shrunk from the tremendous
work and the heavy sacrifices required. Some laid
down their lives over their work; the survivors went
on bravely, draining swamps, planting Eucaliptus
trees by the hundred thousand so that at last the
swamp became a fruitful garden and the desert once
more blossomed like the rose' "

DAVID LLOYD GEORGE.
(In "Where Are We Going?")

'TpHERE is a complaint which is commonly repeated
JL against the Jews which shows either lack of inf orma-
tion concerning them, or a desire wilfully to mislead the
uninformed. This concerns the Jew in agriculture. The
statement is made and continually repeated that he will
take no part in producing, but only in consuming the
world's supply of food. The accusation is not confined to
one, for in all quarters every prejudiced voice finds another
to echo it, and so this, with other disquieting messages,
circle the world. The massing of immigrants in large
cities, at first glance would seem to support this charge;
but as to all questions there are two sides, so, in this case,
two exist. An examination of conditions will show that
it is not only the immigrant Jews who mass in the cities,
but the native born citizens, who are forsaking the farm-
ing districts this needs no proof for it is a readily ascer-

240

THE JEW IN AGRICULTURE 241

tainable fact. Until very recently, indeed until the great
movements among the philanthropic Jews for the educa-
tion of their people in things agricultural, nothing was
heard of but "deserted farms". Pleas have been uttered
continually for a return to agricultural life. These were
uttered, too, among the Jews for many decades ere the
public heard of a "back to the farm movement" among
non-Jews. That movement instituted through the efforts
of A. B. Ross in 1907, who pleaded for the establishment
of a Farm Bureau that would inform farmers on the latest
scientific aids to farming, received, and deservedly, the
warmest support; but for many years the Jews had been
at work upon the same thought, and their people in scat-
tered groups throughout the world, were struggling back
to the farm, wherever a reasonable hope was held out of
an ultimate independence ; for this is the fundamental hope
of all men, irrespective of race, in whatsoever line of occu-
pation they are to be found.

Agriculture loses its appeal to the great majority
when cheap labor ceases to be available. The cotton-
growing sections of the United States suffered lamentably
for decades after the abolition of slavery. When it was
abolished in the Danish West Indies, now the Virgin
Islands, the agricultural interests that had flourished on
St. Thomas, died at once. Its harbor was one of the finest,
and held out a continual invitation to commerce ; but with-
out cheap labor to assist, its commercial interest withered;
and the same thing has happened repeatedly in connection
with the histories of many ports and commercial centres.
But the onus for this falling away of interest in the farm,
in agricultural pursuits, does not lie upon the shoulders
of the Jews, since, until within a century, the race has not
been allowed, in any land, the opportunity to return to the
farm on any fair terms; on any that would tempt non-
Jews in this truly money-ruled age.

242 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

They have been ruled out from land-owning, in many
instances even from land-leasing, for thousands of years,
long enough to eradicate from any race the love of hus-
bandry that early was a characteristic of them. No coun-
try has encouraged or permitted them upon an equal basis
to till its soil. True, a short-lived caprice has seemed to
hold out here and there such opportunity; but usually
under such conditions as to be tantamount to allowing
them to "make bricks without straw". But there can be
no gainsaying that they were agriculturists even as they
were herdsmen in their old home in the east, in the days
when they were permitted to hold homes of their own.
They cultivated fruits; they were experts in viticulture
long before they were pedlars or merchants. They were
notable winemakers ; they cultivated the mulberry tree and
the silk-worm in Greece in the early centuries of the pres-
ent era.

Long ages before, the Writings bear witness to the
agricultural bent of this people. They abound in references
to the staff, in all lands the herdsman's companion; to the
grass in the field; to the wayside bushes even, and to har-
vest and the sowing time.

All over Mesopotamia, age after age, little groups
have been noted of Jewish farmers, clinging with unparal-
leled tenacity and devotion to the land of their fathers;
planting and reaping from it generation after generation.
Bayard Taylor was deeply impressed by them, and by the
sight of a tattered parchment of the Law which tradition
traced back to the ancient days, but to the reading of
which, Sabbath after Sabbath, these farmers lent a
reverent ear.

In his recollections of "The Land of the Saracens",
he describes the Jewish farming communities in Palestine
as he saw them in the late 40's of last century, resting in
"a sea of bowery orchards". Abundant streams, he notes,

THE JEW IN AGRICULTURE 243

"gurgle through thickets of orange and fig trees; through
pomegranates and rosebowers; and then the masses of
wild vines and the olives! We continued our way", he
writes, "through gardens of almonds; and apricot, prune
and walnut trees growing along the mountain sides were
bound each to the other by great vines whose heavy arms
they seemed barely able to support/' And, he adds, as his
rapture and reverence increases over the beauty and
luxuriance of the historic landscape: "We rode for miles
through a sea of wheat ... the tobacco in the fields
about Ramleh was the most luxuriant I ever saw and here
the olive and the fig attain a size and lusty strength wholly
unknown in Italy. . . . Except in Asia Minor, no por-
tion of the Levant is capable of yielding such a harvest of
grain, silk, wool, fruits, oil and wine/ 5

This description was written more than seventy-five
years ago, before any thought of tHe introduction of mod-
ern ideas of agriculture had begun to penetrate to that his-
toric land. It was still a patriarchal country, to go back
to which had been the dream of the scattered Jewish
people for eighteen hundred years. Benjaman of Tudela,
whose travels are elsewhere referred to, visioned a revival
of Jewish life in Palestine, the hope of the race; and he and
others noted so early as 1170, small settlements, all agricul-
tural groups, scattered through the land. Sixty Jewish
families are recorded as dwelling in the neighborhood of
Gaza in 1485, who were practical farmers engaged in tHe
raising of cereals and grapes and in wine-making.

It is believed by today's scientific investigators that
Palestine was the original grain and cereal producing
country of the world, and those in correspondence with the
Departments of Agriculture of the various modern gov-
ernments within a decade have become aware of Palestine,
as a land to which the human family is likely to turn for

244 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

at least a portion of its breadstuffs in the comparatively
near future.

Joseph Nasi, that picturesque lover of his race, and
predecessor of the great philanthropists of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, was moved to begin the re-build-
ing of Tiberias, in the hope of providing a sanctuary for
his people where they might have a fighting chance for an
undisturbed life. He pictured them as leading the pas-
toral life of their forbears ; of raising flowers, and breed-
ing silkworms; as occupied with the culture of bees and
the production of the famous honey of the Levant. Tibe-
rias was not only dear to him and to Jews, generally, as the
home of his ancestors, but as the shrine where the remains
lay of Maimonides, the second Moses of his people.
Despite the materialism of which the Jews are so per-
sistently accused but which, in another race would be
called practicality, they have been at all times the most
uncalculating idealists in these dreams for the betterment
of living conditions for the weaker members of their race.

So early as 1845 plans were again made, tentatively,
for the restoration of the land of Palestine to the Jews.
This was especially recommended by Sir Moses Monte-
fiore after his tours of observation in the east. Both he
and Cremieux, his fellow-ambassador to Damascus, were
convinced of the feasibility and desirability of such a plan.
In the early sixties the first association of rich Jews was
formed with the object in view of relieving as they might
the less fortunate of their race in Eastern Europe from the
hardships they suffered in many lands.

By the seventies they had succeeded in getting the
assistance of the Sultan of Turkey to the extent of a grant
of a tract of six hundred acres for the establishing of an
experimental school in agriculture for Jewish youth. The
graduates of that school, and their descendants are today
residing on their own farms in Palestine, or attached to

THE JEW IN AGRICULTURE 245

other institutions of learning as instructors and demon-
strators in the various departments of agriculture. From
that time on agricultural colonies, weaklings often because
of the poverty of many of the would-be farmers who were
comprised in them, have come into being in many of the
districts of Palestine, and slowly, ever so slowly it may
seem, and fostered for nearly two decades almost solely by
the devotion of Edmond de Rothschild, progress has been
made toward the rebuilding of that Holy Land.

De Rothschild furnished the farmers with silkworm
stock in the hope of re-establishing one of the ancient in-
dustries of his people. He built wine-cellars and substan-
tially encouraged viticulture. By this time many others
were helping in the work, but were beginning to see that
much more intensive preparation was necessary in the way
of modern and thorough instruction in agriculture to the
new arriving colonists, the majority of whom at no time
had had the opportunity to practice even the simplest plant-
ing and sowing. But the eve of the great Russian exodus
was at hand. Some of the first to emigrate from Russia
sought the refuge of the colonies in Palestine. Baron de
Hirsch, who had been concerned for some time over the
pitiful plight of his people in the East, now began to vis-
ualize their rehabilitation through an organized effort to
help then industrially. How this great project has been
deliberately maligned, has been indicated elsewhere. It
may be said, none-the-less, that this philanthropist's exam-
ple has generated among his people a true passion for the
regeneration, not alone of the Jews of the east, but for
those in remote corners of the earth.

The de Hirsch philanthropies not only embraced
assistance to the Jews desiring to colonize in Palestine, but
the vastly less circumscribed plan of aiding them to emi-
grate to newer lands, where they might grow up with the
country. They included the idea of self-help through in-

246 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

dustrial and general education, especially in the useful
trades, and in agricultural pursuits. His was not a thought
of charity, or the development of paupers; but one of re-
demption for a race hampered and held down for a thou-
sand years, until its best qualities of body and of mind
were often all but extinguished by the humiliations and
hardships it had been called upon continually to bear. It
was his explicit wish in connection with the American
Fund which he (later) established and which is adminis-
tered by the most representative American Jews, that it
should be used to teach immigrants, especially those from
Russia and Roumania, trades; to take care of them, if
need be, while learning them; to institute colonies for them
where they would be free from the horrible experiences
which had followed them in their earlier homes, and to
furnish them with the necessary tools for the carrying on
the trades acquired. Above all, they were to have incul-
cated in them a loyalty to their new homes, and to be
taught the language of the land they dwelt in.

This philanthropy, the more it is examined into is
more and more clearly to be recognized as the greatest
and most constructive gift to mankind that was
ever made. Nominally it was to the Jewish people; but it
is, in fact, a contribution to the welfare of mankind that
is felt in every corner of the earth, and for the reason:
It has set the Jews to work in the field of agriculture, side
by side with non-Jewish agriculturists, at a time when
skilled agriculturists are more needed than ever before.
Sir William Crookes, an authority in many lines of scientific
enquiry, stated in 1908 that the bread-eaters of the world
had increased by 101,000,000, though the raising of wheat
had by no means kept pace with its consumption. Bread
is chiefly consumed by the white races, and with humanity
increasing at its present rate, its position as a staff of life
makes it more and more necessary that agriculture be

THE JEW IN AGRICULTURE 247

speeded up. So late as 1918 reports from the Agricultural
Experiment stations throughout the United States support
that of the older scientist One of these, at hand, states
that "extraordinary conditions now prevailing in the na-
tional life are affecting the production and distribution of
food. The rising prices of food on the one hand encour-
ages production; but, on the other, the high price of raw
materials and particularly of labor required in agricultural
work, limits it. The breadstuffs grown in the State", it
adds, "fall far short of the normal requirements."

These questions may not have presented themselves to
Baron de Hirsch as he sent his agents Emanuel Vene-
ziani was among them in a search of the world for coun-
tries in which the Jews might be colonized without fear of
further persecution. But it is significant that one of the
first countries in which he purchased land for them was
Argentina, the great bread and meat market today of the
Western hemisphere. Argentina's history since that
colonization began, has provided ample proof that given a
man-to-man chance, and reasonable equipment for sustain-
ing himself during the period of adjustment to his new
surroundings, both the Jewish immigrant agriculturist and
his children will give as good an accounting of themselves
as any who have had to do with the agricultural up-build-
ing of North and South America.

Many Russian Jews, also others from eastern Europe,
entered into the industrial life of Argentina. At the out-
break of the World War some twenty-seven thousand Jew-
ish immigrants were established there, of whom nineteen
thousand were engaged in agricultural occupations. Not-
withstanding those drawbacks against which the farmer is
helpless, drawbacks which are legally termed "visitations
of God", such as plagues of locusts, overlong rains and
overlong droughts ; in some parts, even of seismic disturb-
ances now and then to terrify them, these Jewish agricul-

248 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

turists have produced excellent crops; raised great herds
of livestock including thousands of milch-cows, and have
established thriving creameries and dairies in many locali-
ties. By those who have visited their Argentina farms it is
said that at the bottom of the success of the Jewish farmers
lies the fact that they have been met by other races with
an amity and understanding that has relieved them of the
double effort of fighting down prejudices while building up
the interests of the country.

Baron de Hirsch did not live to see all of his hopes
materialize, but such reports as reached him from South
America fortified his belief in the ultimate success of his
colonization plans. He died sure that his people if given
an opportunity, a fair one, would turn willingly from
crowded cities and acquit themselves in occupations that
were connected with the soil. His own words will best
explain this faith, his views, his hopes. He wrote, in the
Forum, in 1891 :

"In the countries where Jews have been permitted to
acquire land, where they have found an opportunity to
devote themselves to agriculture, they have proved to be
excellent farmers. For example, in Hungary, they form
a very large part of the tillers of the soil ; and this fact is
acknowledged to such an extent that the high Catholic
clergy in Hungary almost exclusively have Jews as tenants
on mortmain properties, and almost all large land-holders
give preference to the Jews on account of their industry,
their rectitude and their dexterity. These are facts that
cannot be hid and that have force; so that the anti-Semitic
movement, which for a long time flourished in Hungary,
must expire. It must do so because everyone sees that so
important a factor in the productive activity of the country
especially in agriculture cannot be spared. My per-
sonal experience has led me to recognize that the Jews
have good ability in agriculture. I have seen this per-

THE JEW IN AGRICULTURE 249

sonally in the Jewish agricultural colonies of Turkey; and
the reports from the expedition that I have sent to the
Argentine Republic plainly show the same fact. These
convictions led to my activities towards bettering the un-
happy lot of the poor down-trodden Jews; and my efforts
show that Jews have not lost the agricultural qualities that
their forefathers possessed. I shall try to make for them
a home in different lands, where, as free farmers, on their
own soil, they can make themselves useful to the country
in which they dwell."

The Baron de Hirsch Fund has greatly advanced the
agricultural and industrial status of the Jew in the United
States, but prior to its establishment there had been dis-
played in many States and at different periods several
movements toward the farm, marked and highly sig-
nificant efforts here and there to enter the agricultural
field. In the Colonial days, a Portuguese Jew, brought the
first mulberry trees to Georgia, and planted grapevines
there. There were Jewish cotton planters, as well, in the
days before the Civil war. So far back as 1837, when
Jewish immigration was a scarcely mentioned incident in
the life of the United States, though the Jew in Europe
was meeting with various ill-treatment that seared his
spirit, a handful of Russian Jews arrived here and at-
tempted to establish a colony for farming in Ulster County,
New York. A dozen families yearning to found a "refuge
for the Jews", to have a place they might call their own,
settled in Wawarsing, in that county.

Unfortunately they were better idealists than they
were practical agriculturists, and five years later they had
lost their little capital, and, what was worse, their courage
to proceed; yet forty years later when the disgraceful
pogroms against the Jews were launched in Russia, when
Austria refused to harbor the fleeing refugees and Baron
de Hirsch stepped forward with the Alliance Israelite;

250 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

(\vhich he had so largely financed) when he, with the help
of co-workers in the United States made it possible for the
better-trained Jewish agriculturists to come to America,
the town of Wawarsing came to life again, and shortly
became a centre for a great colony of Jewish farmers, who
today are in the highest degree, prosperous. Throughout
Ulster, Sullivan and Rensselaer Counties in New York
State farmers of this race own, free and clear, large areas
of fertile country, which, by their diligence and intelligent
agricultural enterprise has become known the nation over
as one of the most prosperous farming regions in the Em-
pire State.

Each farming community in these counties has its
own centre, in such towns as Monticello, Centreville, Nas-
sau, Tannersville, besides the many thriving villages that
have grown up, each of which has its own Jewish School.
Each may follow peacefully its own home customs; each
has its own physician and special religious leader. They
raise grain and poultry; vegetables, fruits and berries for
nearby markets. They are energetic in Jewish agricultural
movements, indeed this is characteristic of all the active
agricultural centres which are being developed by Jewish
farmers. They are of their time and are organized for mu-
tual help and co-operation, the country over. Is a discovery
made in horticulture or agriculture a something of value
in the care and raising of cattle their excellent farming
papers carrying the news from one end of the country to the
other. Men of the same traditions, the same past sufferings,
they have perceived the value of such organization and of
the educational advantages they offer, and they work
unitedly for the improvement of farm labor and farm life.
Between these and other agricultural communities, too, a
Jewish Farmer's Exchange has been established which
plays a valuable part in solving many of the difficult prob-
lems that confront the detached farmer from time to time.

THE JEW IN AGRICULTURE 251

But Onondaga county in the alfalfa belt of New
York State, has also a large Jewish farms area. Some of
the most successful dairymen in the State are Jewish and
reside here contributing to the supply of milk which is
daily carried on to New York City. On Long Island are
to be found many Jewish farmers engaged in raising
vegetables and fruit and poultry for the city trade. But
it is not possible to confine the refutal of the charges
against the Jews in agriculture to instances gathered from
a county or two in the Empire State, since they are farm-
ing today, and successfully, in practically every State in
the Union.

What is regarded as the most prosperous Jewish farm-
ing settlement in the country lies about Hartford, Con-
necticut, where great dairy farms and rich herds of choice
cattle are to be found, and also tobacco plantations as rich
as any on the western hemisphere.

Professor Cance of the Massachusetts Agricultural
college has rated this community most highly, and
describes its growth as having been made possible through
loans from the Jewish Agricultural Aid Society, which
lent not only money to the immigrants who were equipped
for farming, but also its practical knowledge and counsel
in the matter of purchasing and equipping the farms. This
important Jewish farming centre is not yet twenty years
old; and, though mill workers have left their benches with
their savings and purchased there, yet the bulk of the
farmers are again those Russian Jews against whom so
many vicious attacks have been made in the last year or
two.

When the Jewish farmers began to enter Connecticut,
in 1902, there were many "abandoned farms" available;
farms abandoned by non-Jews who could not endure the
hardships of farm life, and were not disposed to cling to
the soil their ancestors had tilled for generations at the

252 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

expense of further sacrifice. No reverence for past asso-
ciations held them. Some of those farms today, by the
thrift and scientific farming which their Jewish owners
are applying, are yielding as high as $6,500 annually on
their tobacco crops alone.

There are Jewish farmers developing land in Mich-
igan, growing fruit there, raising poultry and cattle. In
the arid belt of Nebraska, where few others would have
the courage to attempt it, Jewish farmers have taken up
government land and are growing with the country.
There are colonies of Jewish farmers in Utah; in Mis-
souri; in North Dakota where, though they were obliged
to go through periods of great want, they are nevertheless
triumphing, and in many departments of farming, pros-
pering. Compelled in their early days in this territory,
to live as did other pioneers, in dugouts, in any shelter
they could get, since 1905, they have been able to erect
frame houses, comfortable barns, and supply themselves
with the best and latest farming implements.

It has been said that the Jewish farmer colonists in
the United States and in Canada which countries were the
first to receive the de Hirsch Fund Colonists, soon grew
weary of their struggle and went back into petty com-
merce. Upon examination into facts, however, it would
appear that their courage held out a little longer, fact
examined upon fact, than that of non- Jewish (and therefore
entirely unimpeded), fanners in parallel situation. Some
fifty or more Jewish farmers, coming direct from Russia
went in 1881 to Louisiana, where, assisted by loans from
the de Hirsch Fund, they were enabled to settle on the
Island of Sicily in the Mississippi and purchase the need-
ful farming implements. With diligence and enthusiasm
they set to work. Success seemed smiling at them when
without warning, (as one of their people describes it terse-
ly) "one of the Mississippi floods swept everything away;

THE JEW IN AGRICULTURE 253

houses, cattle, implements and first crops". It can bring
no criticism upon those farmers that they fled, in despair
to take up what they could to gain their bread.

Another little colony in South Dakota, their crops of
rye and flax, of wheat and oats ready for the harvesting
find it suddenly destroyed by the Hessian Fly a pest
which devoured the substance of Jew and non-Jew, and
made as many of the latter despair as it did of the Jews.
The arid soil of Colorado where irrigation at that time was
impossible, and where the spring torrents wrought devas-
tation upon everything in their paths, disheartened little
Jewish colonies which had been planted in that State, also.

These are some of the tragic incidents in the lives of
the pioneer Jewish farmers in the west They were heroic
as were the non- Jewish farmers, and even a trifle more so
since most of them were pitifully poor and were strangers
in a strange land. All through the eighties and nineties
in numberless out-of-the-way places groups of these coura-
geous and industrious Jews made efforts to get a
foothold in agriculture and away from the cities. They
may be traced to the forest lands of Oregon where one
sturdy group set out to hew its way to a homestead by
chopping down trees and cutting them into railroad ties
while clearing the land for a future planting. For eight
years they stood the hardships and labor and deprivations
of that backwoods' life, and then, the railroad completed
which had sustained them, they gave up the struggle, as
did many non- Jewish pioneers whose courage was no
better.

This and similar Jewish endeavor to enter into agri-
culture may be traced in every State in the Union. In
every State individuals have succeeded where large coloni-
zation was not always successful. The numerical strength
of the Jewish fanners, however, is difficult to ascertain,
owing to the fact that races are not indicated in the Gov-

254 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

eminent statistics but only the country of nativity. So
late as 1922, there were upward of seventy thousand Rus-
sian and Roumanian and Hungarian farmers listed, the
immigrants from which countries are very largely Jewish.
What is far more important than numbers in viewing the
Jew in agriculture, is the intelligent effort the race is mak-
ing in the education of its youth for agricultural careers.
This is the first fruits of the de Hirsch Fund planting,
and also of the incomparable service to his race of Rabbi
Joseph Krauskopf, of Philadelphia. The de Hirsch Fund
Trustees with millions at their command, founded the new
Jersey farming colonies that have become a source of pride
and satisfaction to the State, first at Woodbine and then at
Vineland, and established there agricultural schools from
which intelligently trained farmers have gone out into
many States in the Union. Dr. Krauskopf, having no
money, gave himself to the founding of the National Farm
School at Doylestown, Pennsylvania, the fame of which,
and many of the graduates of which, have reached the
farthermost parts of the world. Two of its graduates
but recently have been called to Argentina to give agricul-
tural instruction to the special schools that have been
opened in that country.

The Woodbine School and colony was started in
1893, the pupils receiving instruction in planting, in plant
surgery, and in the care of fruit trees and growing plants.
The colonists almost without exception were made up of
that despised class, the Russian Jew. One such, a brilliant
plant chemist, was made supervisor and organizer of the
school. The meaning to the community of the work of
this school may best be shown by a glance at the careers
of some of the earlier pupils there.

Among the colonists was a family of Russian Jews,
by name, Lipman. They would at once come into the cate-
gory of un-worthwhile Russian Jews which the "World's

THE JEW IN AGRICULTURE 255

Work" has seen fit to denominate as detrimental to our
American thought and life.

One of the sons of this family, Jacob G. Lipman, en-
tered the de Hirsch Agricultural School at Woodbine and
was graduated therefrom, and later from the New Jersey
State Agricultural College and from Cornell University.
Since the family were scarcely in "easy" circumstances,
his path could hardly have been one of ease. Today he is
Professor of Soil Chemistry in the New Jersey Agricul-
tural College and Director of the State Agricultural Ex-
periment station ; the authority to whom the agriculturists
of the State look for counsel on all points in connection
with their problems. Charles Bernard Lipman, a younger
brother of the same family began as a student at the
Woodbine Agricultural School going later to Rutgers,
and is now Soil bacteriologist and chemist at the Univer-
sity of California.

Another Russian-born agriculturist, a graduate of
the School of Forestry at Yale, J. G. Levison, was for a
long time Chief Agriculturist of the Brooklyn Department
of Parks. Under Gifford Pinchot he was in charge of
Prospect Park for ten years, making it, as has been said,
"the famously beautiful Park it now is." A lecturer at
Yale, specializing on shade trees, he has also developed
some of the most beautiful estates on Long Island.

Many practical farmers, horticulturists, dairymen,
stock-raisers have come from the de Hirsch School and
the National Farm School of Doyleston, and from both
have issued a brilliant succession of professorial scientists
to fill chairs of Agriculture in various parts of the world.
Jacob G. Taubenhaus, a Doylestown and Cornell graduate,
fills the office of Assistant Professor of plant Pathology
at the Delaware Agricultural College and Experiment Sta-
tion ; Maurice Mitzmain, from the same school, and, later
from the University of California, was Chief Entomolo-

256 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

gist for the United States in the Department of Agricul-
ture in the Philippine Islands. Professor H. L. Sabso-
vich, first superintendent of the Woodbine School was
afterward Chemist at the California Agricultural Experi-
ment Station. Jacob Kotinsky, a graduate of the Wood-
bine School was for several years Chief Entomologist and
Assistant Director of the United States Experiment Sta-
tion at Honolulu. M. E. Jaffa, graduate of the de Hirsch
School is Nutrition Expert at the California Agricultural
Experiment Station.

Nor do these, by any means, cover the activities of
the American Jew in avenues agricultural ; and the techni-
cal training which the youths of the Jewish people are
receiving in this field, gives promise of a growing import-
ance to the country of this people. But surely enough
testimony is here presented to indicate that if there is a
shortage of farmers in the country, the fault does not lie
with the Jews who contribute a just quota, but rather with
that class of non-Jew who neither knows nor cares where
his food comes from so long as it is at hand when he is
hungry. The Jew today is probably a little more alive to
the possibilities and interests of agriculture than any other
class of citizen.

It was a Jew, Bernard Marks, who not only founded
a number of Jewish farming colonies in the west, but led
in the irrigation activities of that land. It was Mr. Marks,
too, who was so closely identified with the introduction of
alfalfa grass into the country. It is the Jewish farmers
who are the quickest to see the advantages of new labor-
saving devices for farm work, for the dairy, for the cream-
ery. The Jewish agriculturist, not only has his Farmers'
Exchanges, his Farmers 5 Reviews, but keeps closely in
touch with the Department of Agriculture at Washing-
ton, and avails himself alertly of every scientific discovery

THE JEW IN AGRICULTURE 257

as to soil treatment, soil enrichment, and plant develop-
ment.

Mr. David Lloyd George, in his work, "Where are we
going"? says of the farmers of Palestine: "Everywhere
the Jew cultivator produces heavier and richer crops than
his Arab neighbor. He has introduced into Palestine more
scientific methods of cultivation, and his example is pro-
ducing a beneficent effect on the crude tillage of the Arab
peasant." Something very like this may also be said of
the Jewish farmer in the world, generally. He is no longer
"a brother of the ox;" The Jewish "man with the Plow"
has risen erect and to his true place beside the chemist and
scientist.

CHAPTER XIV

The Jew in Jurisprudence; in Statesmanship; in

Diplomacy

"The same passionate intensity which makes the
grandeur of the Hebrew literature . . . gives them
the peculiar effectiveness that comes from turning all
the powers of the mind, imaginative as well as rea-
soning, into a single channel, be that channel what if
may. They produce, in proportion to their numbers,
an unusually large number of able and successful
men as any one may prove by recounting the eminent
Jews of the last seventy years!'

JAMES BRYCE.
(In "Biographical Studies")

IF we may judge by the existence of the Noachic, as often
spoken of as the pre-Sinaitic laws, even from before
the time of Moses, law-giver, leader and liberator of his
people, law was a study, and it and its related activities
in statecraft and diplomacy a natural calling of the Jews.
The development of their law systems from those of
tradition to those contained in the Book, and the tracing
of the Rabbinical interpreters and framers of the later
laws to the entrance of the Jew into the practice of the
Roman and English secular law systems, is far too vast
an enterprise to be undertaken in a work of this scope;
but it may be said that law schools and academies were
known among the Jews in the beginning of the present
era in their centres of learning in the East and in Spain,
and that laws covering all the points of friction between
members of a community, were plainly in operation among
them. Maimonides, whom Grotius quotes frequently, in
his law writings specifically defines, for example, the
powers of attorney, and methods of suing and defending
clients in their courts.

258

IN JURISPRUDENCE; STATESMANSHIP; DIPLOMACY 259

Equally, from century to century are to be found
"wise" Jews who have served potentates and peoples as
legal and diplomatic advisers, and as ambassadors be-
tween negotiating countries; and while the Justinian Code
in Christian countries deprived them of civil rights and
as often of common human rights, yet it is certain that
individuals of the Jewish race were, every now and then,
to be found even in public offices ; for in the late thirteenth
century canonical prohibitions were renewed against
"trusting the Jews with public offices." They were for cen-
turies the necessary intermediaries between the Christian
and the Mohammedan world; the confidential advisers of
the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs. It will have been
seen elsewhere the height of power to which Joseph Nasi,
as Turkish statesman, rose in the early sixteenth century.
Great "feats of diplomacy" were performed in those days
which were at least shared in by Jews ; but we must deal
here with those which are especially linked with the last
and the present centuries in which the Jew has taken a
truly great part, the time being the first in the ages in
which he has been free to do so as other men have been.
His appearance as an active factor in law is not, in view
of the past tendencies of his race, surprising, nor is his
success in this field, though it has been little short of un-
paralleled; but as statesman and diplomat in the modern
world systems, so various, and so much more difficult
than the simpler systems of an earlier period, his stride
to the front commands both wonder and admiration from
the student of foreign and home relationships.

Mr. Marriott says in his work, "The European Com-
monwealth" that the public is not half interested as yet
in this new thing, diplomacy, which, he says, is a word
that only came into being through Edmund Burke toward
the end of the eighteenth century, though what it stands
for may be traced to the fifteenth; and Mr. Marriott out-

260 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

lines, in a concise summary, the new era of nations as we
know them today, the process of forming which, he says,
was not completed until nearly the end of the nineteenth
century. We may most easily be conducted into a posi-
tion in which to judge the Jew in this field, and in that of
statecraft, by reviewing this brief and informing sum-
mary.

"Not until the decade of 1870 and 1880 was conti-
nental Europe exhaustively parceled out among the inde-
pendent States, based, for the most part, upon the
recognition of the national idea. France, Spain, and the
United Provinces," Marriott says, "emerged as Nation
States in the course of the sixteenth century ; modern Aus-
tria came to the birth with the virtual death of the medie-
val Empire of the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) ; a unified
and self-conscious Russia was brought into being by the
genius of Peter the Great early in the eighteenth century;
the birth of Prussia, due to the industry and persistence
of the Hohenzollern Electors of Brandenburg was almost
co-incident with that of Russia. But the rapid multiplica-
tion of Nation-States came only with the nineteenth cen-
tury. Belgium as a Nation-State dates from 1830; Greece
from the same time; while the Balkan States, Roumania,
Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro gradually re-emerged
from the superimposed dominion of the Ottoman Empire
between 1859 and 1878. From the same period must be
dated the birth/' the author continues, "of still greater
Nation-States. The Italian Risorgimento, originating, as
Mazzini admitted, in the Napoleonic occupation, stimu-
lated by the sporadic revolutions of 1848, helped on a
further stage by the calculating intervention of Napo-
leon III in 1859, brought near to fruition by the wise
statesmanship and adroit diplomacy of Cavour and Victor
Emmanuel, finally attained its zenith in 1870-L In the

IN JURISPRUDENCE; STATESMANSHIP; DIPLOMACY 261

same year, Bismarck, with the help of Roon and Moltke,
completed the fabric of a united Germany/'

It happens that in all this reforming of States, the
Jewish element has played a significant part.

It may be said that in the last century revolution has
produced evolution, and evolution has brought the Jew
into the possession of his long withheld political rights.
It has freed his forces in new fields, in which, even in that
short period, he has risen to the most dignified heights,
and this not in any one special territory, but in all in which
he has made his home and to which he has given his
patriotic devotion. There is not a government in modern
Europe nor, for that matter on the Western hemisphere,
which has not been benefited during all this evolutionary
period by Jews, trained in the law; none wherein, given
the opportunity, or allowed to seek it, the Jews have not
become ornaments to the bar, distinguished in Statesman-
ship, and invaluable diplomatic representatives or assist-
ants in international relationships.

Friedrich J. Stahl, whom the Prussian King ap-
pointed as a life-member of the first Chamber afterward
designated as the Herrenhaus was the first Jew to attain
fame in German diplomacy. Lord Acton, who, however,
is not wholly safe from the suggestion of a bit of per-
sonal feeling he was too great an admirer of Gladstone
to do full justice to that statesman's great rival wrote of
Stahl: "He has had a more predominant influence and
showed more political ability than Lord Beaconsfield."
However, Stahl is but one of many statesmen of the race
who have had conspicuous parts in the political re-forming
of the European States.

The late Mr. Andrew D. White, who wrote of an-
other Jew, from the standpoint of close observation and
personal knowledge, said in his "Seven Great Statesmen" :
"Edward Lasker was one of the most eminent parlia-

262 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

mentarians during the formation period of Germany. He
was an accepted leader of the National Liberal Party, and
in his ability to sway thinking men, and in his influence
over liberal-minded men throughout the Empire, he was
one of the foremost statesmen of his time." Nor can we
do better, in view of one of the last flings at the Jew to be
made by an editor of the 'World's Work" he denies them
ability to rank high in the field we are now entering
than to follow Mr. White somewhat farther in his esti-
mate of Herr Lasker. He continues:

"At the first elections to the Imperial Parliament
Lasker had been chosen by a half dozen districts, and he
represented in the Prussian Parliament the important con-
stituency of Frankfort-on-Main. As a jurist, publicist
and debater, he stood among the foremost; his integrity
was unimpeachable. He had won a victory over financial
misdoing on a large scale by which he had driven a finance
minister out of office, and he had dared to attack the
business enterprises of one of the proudest princes in the
Empire. In various exigencies he had been one of Bis-
marck's most important supporters, and, notably, one of
his main aids in reforming German Jurisprudence: but"
and here is another instance of the many thousands that
might be cited of the Jew's non-mercenary spirit, of his
willingness to sacrifice his personal ambitions for a prin-
ciple "in sundry other measures dear to the Chancellor's
heart, Lasker opposed him. He could not be reckoned on
for thick and thin support and Bismarck's antipathy
toward him became passionate."

Lasker was on a visit to America, in connection with
the opening of a great western railroad (the Northern
Pacific), when death struck him. Shocked, and pro-
foundly moved, the House of Representatives at once sent
its sympathies to Germany through the proper official
channels. But, to the astonishment of everyone, con-

IN JURISPRUDENCE; STATESMANSHIP; DIPLOMACY 263

tinues Mr. White, "Bismarck cynically withheld it from
the Diet and by the speediest channel returned it to
America with a verbal message more curt than polite
its significance being: 'Mind your own business! 3 " Nor
did the matter end there, Mr. White informs us, "for the
Iron Chancellor showed his displeasure even showered
it upon the American plenipotentiary, driving him, at last,
to resign."

In Austria, at about the same mid-century period,
Freiherr von Winterstein took his seat in the House of
Lords; and Adolf Fischer, as counsellor to the liberal
Government, and Kuranda (one of the most progressive
spirits of that exciting period which marked the emergence
of the Jews from their political obscurity of centuries)
began to take part in the re-forming of their State. In
that changing period every country in Europe had its own
distinguished Jewish light. They burst forth in jurispru-
dence, statecraft, and in every avenue of diplomacy. In
Italy, Samuel Alatri, a native Roman, sat in Parliament
for the Second District of Rome, where for sixty years
he worked for the uplifting of his people. For years
Alatri headed the delegations from the State which waited
upon the Pope. Such was his persuasive eloquence, that
Pope Gregory XVI nicknamed him "our Cicero." The
re-organization of the financial department of Rome was
entrusted to him by Victor Emmanuel, who later put into
his hands the adjustment of the Italian budget When
Alatri died (having survived his son, a most revered
philanthropist of Rome) it was said by the Syndic of
Rome that his city "mourned for Alatri as for a father."

Italy has been especially free from bias in her deal-
ing with her several classes of citizens, and, in conse-
quence, has bred many notable Jewish statesmen and
jurists of whom the world has heard much in the last half
century. Luigi Luzzatti, whose family for several hun-

264 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

dred years have been notable among Italy's scholars and
philosophers, has not only filled the Chair of Law in sev-
eral of her great Universities, but sat in her Parliament
for upward of three decades. A Minister in Giolitti's
cabinet, he became Premier, in time, and continuously has
served his native country in the most delicate negotiations.
His name will go down in history with that of Baron
Sydney Sonnino, who, with him, represented Italy during
the Versailles conferences. Baron Sonnino, an inter-
nationally recognized statesman and diplomat, came into
world notice when, in 1906, he was called upon to form a
ministry. He made this ministry one of the most success-
ful in modern years. The Baron, however, had already
represented his country in diplomacy; serving it at
Madrid, Vienna and at Berlin; and last, at Versailles, with
Luzzatti, his confrere. He was one of the three speakers
sat a highly important session of that famous gathering,
the others being ex-President Wilson and Mr. David
Lloyd George,

In view of the wonderful use the Jews have made of
their short political freedom, it is increasingly amazing
that any should be found among the professedly intellec-
tual, who could continue to indulge in comparisons which
are especially odious in this racial discussion. "In
statesmanship/' admits the writer in the "World's Work/'
whose pen has been especially active in the work of be-
littling the Jew, "they have a Disraeli, but no Cromwell
or Pitt, or Washington, or Lincoln." To which one might
reply: But they had a Moses. "What Jewish orator is
there," asks this writer, "to put in the same class with
Burke, or Fox, or Sheridan?" To which one may respond
truthfully: Non-Jews, at least as capable of estimating
their fellowmen accurately as this critic, have ranked
Judah P. Benjamin with these famous men. The Jews
have not produced a Blackstone or a Grotius, he says,

IN JURISPRUDENCE; STATESMANSHIP; DIPLOMACY 265

forgetting that both spoke from the inborn consciousness
of a people living free for thousands of years; and that
they drew upon the Hebrews for precedents. But they
have produced the author of the Ten Commandments in
which lies the seed of all modern concepts of Law. They
have been for a hundred years identified with the adminis-
tration and even the codification of law in every modern
land and have helped to shape and to steady international
relations throughout what is called the civilized world.
They have strengthened and enlarged empires, even while
still handicapped by political disabilities and by the need
for meeting the constant foe of racial prejudice, and injus-
tices arising from it

Nothing could reveal more plainly the deep roots of
this prejudice, which even superior minds, it may be un-
consciously, continue to cherish and to pass on to posterity,
than the various literary attempts that have been made to
paint a portrait of Benjamin Disraeli, afterward Lord
Beaconsfield. The late Mr. James Bryce has written of
him, one of England's foremost premiers, that he is "one
of the six or seven Pitt, Fox, Wellington, Peel, Disraeli;
possibly Canning, or O'Connell, or Melbourne whose
names are on our lips today". But Mr. Bryce's biography
itself contains much that is disappointing; he devotes
sixty-eight pages to an analysis of Beaconsfield as states-
man, as man, as novelist, and allows him some rare gifts;
but in the end, and especially in his differentiations between
Beaconsfield and that other great statesman, Gladstone,
he demonstrates the truth of Taine's saying: "Change a
virtue in its circumstance and it becomes a vice; change
a vice in its circumstance and it becomes a virtue."

In his "European Commonwealth' 9 Mr. J. A. R.
Marriott credits Beaconsfield with "England's purchase
of the Khedive's shares in the Suez Canal in 1875," which
diplomatic activity gave England a quick path to her pos-

266 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

sessions in the East; with the bringing about of the procla-
mation of Victoria as Empress of India in 1876; with the
acquisition of the Transvaal in 1877; and with that of
Cyprus in 1878 (three years before Beaconsfield's death,
at a ripe age), all of which mark, says Marriott, "the
realization of a definite and conscious policy." These
great diplomatic accomplishments escape Mr. Bryce's
attention save by an observation that suggests that
Beaconsfield's eastern policies and acquisitions were negli-
gible. Though always politely, he diminishes all the bene-
fits which Beaconsfield conferred upon England, accen-
tuates his personal shortcomings, and with the same
politeness accentuates Gladstone's virtues while entirely
overlooking his known weak points. A lack of candor
exists in these omissions in connection with both states-
men. Beaconsfield's service was great. He never failed
in an emergency, nor blundered as did Gladstone in sell-
ing Heligoland to a rival nation. Both were great men, and
both eminently human. What is striking in Mr. Bryce's
appraisals of both, is that he is at pains to describe as
Semitic in Beaconsfield the traits which reappear in his
descriptions of Gladstone; which traits appear, upon
examination, to be very plainly human ones.

These human characteristics in the case of Mr.
Gladstone are never "Scottish" or "Presbyterian"; never
"English" or "Episcopalian"; but they are in Beacons-
field's case always "Hebraic," "Semitic"; the result of
"his Jewish origin," of his "Hebrew intensity," or his
"Hebrew detachment"; and again and again does he
speak of him as "an alien," as one under "the disadvan-
tages of not being really an Englishman," though,, as else-
where stated, Beaconsfield was the second of his race to
be born in England and the third to reside there for a
lifetime. Surely our language requires a new defining

IN JURISPRUDENCE; STATESMANSHIP; DIPLOMACY 267

when "alien" can be applied to a case like that of Beacons-
field's, by a scholar of Mr. Bryce's standing.

This diplomat-author carries his reiteration of race
even to his. closing paragraph. History, he thinks, will
not leave Beaconsfield "without a meed of admiration."
When all possible explanations of his success have been
given, he goes on, "what a wonderful career ! An adven-
turer, foreign in race, in ideas, in temper, without money
or family connections, climbs, by patient and unaided
efforts, to lead a great party, master a powerful aristoc-
racy, sway a vast empire and make himself one of the four
or five greatest personal forces in the world. His head
is not turned by his elevation. He never becomes a dema-
gogue; never stoops to beguile the multitude by appealing
to sordid instincts. He retains through life a certain
amplitude of view, a due sense of the dignity of his posi-
tion, a due regard for the traditions of the ancient assem-
bly which he leads, and when, at last, the destinies of
England fall into his hands, he feels the grandeur of the
charge and seeks to secure what he believes to be her im-
perial place in the world." Well might Mr. Bryce add,
that whatever judgment history may ultimately pass upon
Beaconsfield, she will find in "the long annals of the Eng-
lish Parliament no more striking figure."

Marriott, writing fourteen years later, has no dis-
qualifying word to say in his brief appraisal of the great
part this statesman played in the establishment of Eng-
land's prosperity during his connection with the Govern-
ment. He says that Disraeli had the imagination to per-
ceive even Mn Bryce allows him "an occasional flash
of insight" and this long before the truth was revealed
to the mass of his countrymen, that a new era was dawn-
ing, and Marriott quotes this from Disraeli, himself:
"You have/ 5 he said, "a new world, new influences ^at
work, new and unknown objects and dangers with

268 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

which to cope. . . . The relations of England to Europe
are not the same as they were in the days of Lord Chat-
ham, or of Frederick the Great. The Queen of England
has become the sovereign of the most powerful of Oriental
States. On the other side of the globe there are now
establishments belonging to her, teeming with wealth and
population . . . there are vast and novel elements in the
distribution of power , . . what our duty is at this critical
moment is to maintain the Empire of England." Mr.
Marriott adds, with sincere and just feeling, it would
seem:

"Lord Beaconsfield was denounced by opponents as a
political charlatan, an Oriental adventurer. . . .
Posterity will decide whether the denunciation was just
or whether the accusations will recoil upon the heads of
the accusers; but this is certain: Lord Beaconsfield per-
ceived that a vast change was taking place under the eyes
of his contemporaries, though by the majority of them
unperceived, in the centre of political gravity. 'A new
world, new influences at work/ Lord Beaconsfield was
at least enough of an Englishman to entertain an ardent
hope that the new world might be predominatingly Eng-
lish ; that the new influences might be directed into chan-
nels which would subserve the interests of England, and
therefore (as an Englishman may be forgiven for believ-
ing) the interests of mankind/'

Disraeli, who combined so many potentialities; so
many qualities which lesser man could not perceive, who
hid his every smart under a smiling face, making himself
such a mystery of self-control that his followers fancied
that he must have "some hidden resources of wisdom as
well as of courage; who never had familiars, was admitted
by Mr. Byrce to have attained the heights to which he
rose "without patronage or support 5 ' and even against
opposition "more often concealed than in the open."

IN JURISPRUDENCE; STATESMANSHIP; DIPLOMACY 269

Nevertheless he regards his subject as "a favorite of for-
tune rather than as one who in himself is entitled to credit
for any part in his rise. First, Mr. Bryce says, Disraeli
had the "fortune" of belonging to the "right political
party/' though, contradictorily, he points out that it was
the opposite of "right" if we may take popularity as an
evidence. Such Brightness" as it came presently to have
was through the efforts of Disraeli himself. Moreover,
the weakness of that party was really responsible for the
admission of Disraeli to it. They needed votes. They
needed support. They even came to need the Jew. The
question of a changed faith may have and did have, un-
questionably, a small part in relieving his position, for
Jews, as a race, were still many decades from political
enfranchisement. Disraeli has left records in his letters
to his sister, that his race was never forgotten. "What
did you talk about?" he was once asked after an inter-
view held with another great man. "Race, as usual," was
his laconic reply.

Mr. Bryce says that the conspiracies hatched against
Disraeli to keep him out of an active leadership of his party
and he ran five times before he succeeded in winning a
seat in the House might well have prospered had there
been at hand another candidate capable of crossing swords
with the leaders in possession. The story of the obstacles
Disraeli encountered, of the strenuous rivalries, often with
worthy competitors, furnish some of the most engrossing
pages in the political history of England. Even Mr. Bryce
perceived this. He writes: "Nothing so fascinates mankind
as to see a man equal to every fortune, unshaken by
reverses, indifferent to personal abuse against apparently
hopeless odds with the sharpest weapons and a smiling
face. . . , Beaconsfield laid his spell upon the imagina-
tion of observers in continental Europe," he adds, "and
received at his death a sort of canonization from a large

270 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

section of the English people." Mr. Bryce includes Mr.
Gladstone's reply made to a lady who asked him what he
thought of Beaconsfield. "Two things have struck me as
very admirable/' Gladstone is said to have responded; "his
perfect loyalty to his wife and his perfect loyalty to his
race." There was also his perfect loyalty to England,
but this was omitted.

Brilliant biographer as he is, Mr. Bryce displays this
tendency to the politely invidious in another biographical
paper on Sir George Jessel, who, Mr. Bryce has writ-
ten, "had confessedly, the strongest judicial intellect on
the English Bench. ... He never had an equal and
in our own days a rival in dealing with facts."

Probably none of the factors that go to the support
and upkeep of the law and order of civilization today, is
so little heard of, reaps so little acclaim as those who have
to do with the administration of the law in what is known
as the Courts of Equity. There is nothing in such prac-
tice, as Mr, Bryce points out, of the sensational, that may
attract the public. The cases handled are of such nature
as to call for the most absolute knowledge of facts and of
legal precedents, and subtle definitions. Reputations and
legal values in this field are only made by and known to
"the legal fraternity". This was the case, says Mr. Bryce,
with Sir George Jessel, whose fame among his fellows as
Master of the Rolls was extraordinary, even though his
name was seldom heard (until toward the end of his short
career) by his fellow-Britishers.

Sir George Jessel rose through sheer ability, the first
Jew to attain a high judicial position without disavowing
his ancestral faith. He was a Queen's Counsel at forty-
one, and at forty-four Mr. Gladstone called him to his cab-
inet as Solicitor-General. Next we find him in the House
of Commons, and in 1873, the office of Master of the Rolls
becoming vacant, he was appointed to that office which he

IN JURISPRUDENCE; STATESMANSHIP; DIPLOMACY 271

held until his death in 1883. Six judges presided in the
Chancery Court, (afterwards to be termed the Court of
Appeals), but Jessel took and held the highest rank among
them. He decided some of the most important commer-
cial cases of last century. With the exception of Lord
Cairns, whose high capacities were known wherever law
was practised, he had no equal. His decisions, though
delivered on the spur of the moment, "had the merit of
carefully considered utterances", so clear and direct was
their style, so concisely and so cogently are the authorities
discussed and his grounds of decision stated "The judg-
ments of the Master of the Rolls", Mr. Bryce continues,
which fill so many pages of the English Law Reports are
among the best that have ever gone to build up the fabric
of the English law,/' We find historians describing Sir
George as impatient with older practitioners who came to
court unprepared, but notably gentle with inexperienced
and young lawyers ; Mr. Bryce finds him an "illustration
not only of the advantage of throwing open all places to
all comers . . . but also of having a judge at least
equal in ability to the best of those who practice before
them. . . . His premature death was felt to be a
national misfortune."

And yet the pity of it that it should stain his pages
Mr. Bryce finds that certain mannerisms of this great
judge again those which we see constantly and com-
monly exhibited in non- Jewish mankind are racial; that
Jessel was "not a cultured man though he knew a great
deal besides law for instance, mathematics, Hebrew lit-
erature, botany; and had an intelligence of extraordinary
power and flexibility eminently practical . . . and
scientific". This tendency of the teachers of the world,
of literary leaders, to drag in at every turn the race of the
Jew, and always by way of pointing a moral of deprecia-
tion, is far more efficient in the transmission of racial

272 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

prejudices than the broadsides of a Ford, a Chamberlain,
a Belloc could possibly be and is deplorable from what-
soever side it is viewed.

Since practice of the law and participation in its
political life have been opened to the Jews of Great
Britain, innumerable men of this race have performed
valuable services for that government. Sir David Salo-
mons, the first English Jew to take an important political
post, served first as sheriff, then as magistrate, and rising
rapidly to be alderman, he later entered Parliament and
became, in the course of time, Lord Mayor of London, in
1855. Sir Salomons was the first Jew to hold this office.
His career was a long and dignified battle for the removal
of the political difficulties from which his race in England
suffered until the last decade of the nineteenth century.
During his occupancy the Mansion House became a
centre of great brilliancy. As Mayor, Salomons showed
a particularly broad spirit in securing the removal of a
tablet from a London monument, which, attributing the
famous fire of London, of 1666 to the Roman Catholics,
was a continual source of indignation among many Lon-
don citizens. Another Judge Salomons became notable,
as a Queen's Counsel in New South Wales, for his suc-
cessful defense of O'Farrel, a Fenian who had shot the
Duke of Edinburgh in 1868. Sir Julian E. Salomons (for
that was his name) was Chief- Justice in New South
Wales, and served previously in the Ministries of Cowper
and Robertson. Notable Jewish jurists and statesmen
have had great parts in the organizing of Britain's most
important colonies, and, generally are linked with the
efforts that have eventuated in a development of the Em-
pire. It has been characteristic of them, and frequently
is remarked upon, that Jewish statesmen have never com-
plicated their political operations with their private
hatreds, which offers a marked contrast to many who have

IN JURISPRUDENCE; STATESMANSHIP; DIPLOMACY 273

sought to win political sainthood by the persecution and
even attempted annihilation of those who opposed them.

Since the office of Lord Mayor of London was filled
by Sir David Salomon, he has had several distinguished
successors of his own race; Sir Marcus Samuel, and Sir
Benjamin Phillips among others, and the second son of
the latter, Sir George Faudel-Phillips, who made his term
of office famous for his philanthropic activities. He was
responsible for the raising of one million pounds sterling
for the famine sufferers of India.

No greater proof of a nation's confidence in the honor
and integrity of a Jew has been offered to the modern
world than the sending of Lord Reading of Earley, in
vice-regal capacity, to India, to have and to hold the
interests of the Empire intact, and comprehendingly to
administer its laws. The inner reasons for this extraor-
dinary choice and honor to the race will doubtless be eluci-
dated by historians of the future; the stating of them is
not the function of a contemporary. But known facts
already establish the worth of this diplomat in this great
trust, in that peace has been restored to India, which, at
the time of Lord Reading's appointment, was torn by con-
flicting influences and elements. A false diplomatic move,
a tactless or autocratic vice-ruler, the presence of the
wrong representative among a highly wrought and reli-
giously excited people might have proven a match to highly
inflammable material. Only a great man, in whose great-
ness was comprised both wise statesmanship and delicate
understanding of his fellow-beings, would have been equal
to the task Lord Reading undertook, and in which he has
succeeded.

An acumen as wise has led to the appointment of Sir
Herbert Samuel as Governor of Palestine, a country politi-
cally unorganized, and where no Jewish experience that
might co-operate was available. Sir Herbert already had

274 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

served England as Post Master General and in other offices.
His work in Palestine is not that of bringing harmony
among a restless nation but actually of organizing that na-
tion; of developing it; of establishing between it and its
neighbors a mutual understanding that will ultimately bring
back to that ancient land the glory of its earlier history. He
has already succeeded, quietly, in putting it on the map of
the world as it has not been for centuries. A large part of
the success that has attended the re-establishment of Pal-
estine is also said to be due to our American Ambassador,
Morgenthau, who had the oversight of the American
philanthropy which has contributed largely to the rebuild-
ing of Palestine to the present

The name of Adolphe Cremieux brings up in the
minds of the legally learned what has come down as the
"Damascus Affair," of 1840; but his fame does not rest
upon nor was it first attained in his conduct of that famous
case. He was practising law at the age of twenty-one, at
Nimes, where, before he had reached his thirtieth year he
was recognized as a brilliant orator, learned in legal lore,
and skilful in its practice. Paris became aware of him
when he secured the conviction of a daring bandit, one
Trestaillon, who had been a figure in Royalist activities
and was supported by powerful friends. The talk of Paris,
we find Cremieux there shortly, defending the case of a
group of young men who had been imprisoned for singing
the "Marseillaise". The story that tells of his handling of
the case states that he concluded his presentation of the case
to the jury by an eloquent and dramatic recital of a para-
phrase of the famous marching song, which so moved
those who heard him that his clients were promptly ac-
quitted. His fame rose steadily after he took up his resi-
dence in Paris. Here, in the late '30s he secured the aboli-
tion of the More Judaica, a very humilitating oath which

IN JURISPRUDENCE; STATESMANSHIP; DIPLOMACY 275

to that time had been imposed upon the Jews who sought
justice in the Courts,

The "Damascus affair" was one of the most notable
in the legal annals of the first half of the 19th century. It
arose from the disappearance of one, Father Thomas and
his servant, under circumstances which seem never to have
been cleared up. The priest had practiced medicine among
all classes, including the Jews and the Mohammedans. He
had a hot dispute with one of the latter who ended by
accusing him of blaspheming Mahomet, and threatened the
priest with vengeance. A few days later he disappeared,
and a fanatical official who was in conflict with the Jews
of Damascus, found a way of making political capital out
of the case. He circulated the suspicion that Jews had
killed the Priest and his man for ritual purposes, and, the
calumny gathering force, it was not long before thirteen
eminent Jews of the community were arrested and thrown
into prison on the accusation of ritual murder. Here they
were kept, being tempted by gold to betray each other,
and, when this failed, put to excruciating tortures. Among
others, these tortures took the form of pulling out the
beards of the helpless ones; drawing their teeth, searing
their flesh with hot irons. One feeble member of the group
died under these tortues and one other is known to have
turned Mohammedan rather than suffer longer. One
even signed a confession of participation in the crime of
which he was accused.

Nor were these prisoners the only Jews who suffered
in Damascus. The local synogogue was destroyed to-
gether with the sacred scrolls of the law, the heirlooms of
centuries. Pamphlets were disseminated over Europe
accusing the Jews of the practice of ritual murder, and
passions lashed to such a height that the most disastrous
consequences were feared. Such Jews as had the power
sent to the English and French of their race a heartrending

276 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

appeal for help. Diplomatic means were tried, but, unsuc-
cessfully, to obtain the release of the prisoners. Finally,
with credentials from their respective governments to
fortify and protect them, the notable journey was begun,
(of which so much has been written) of Sir Moses Mon-
tefiore, Adolphe Cremieux and Solomon Munk, famous as
an Orientalist. These met and reasoned with the Khedive
and later, with the Sultan Majid at Constantinople. Many
delays occurred and much tedious international corres-
pondence passed between these rulers and those of the
European countries; but the mission eventually succeeded
and a firman was issued which freed the prisoners and de-
clared the charges on which they had been held to be
absolutely groundless. No amends were made for the hor-
rible sufferings of body and mind which had been endured;
but a great public sentiment was stirred up by the case,
which, together with another most vicious outbreak of
violence against the Jews in the same city some twenty
years later culminated in the establishment of the protec-
tive Alliance Israelite Universelle.

Under the Republic which eventuated from the Revo-
lution of 1848, M. Cremieux served as Minister of Justice
and was instrumental in abolishing capital punishment for
political offenders; in doing away with the barbarous cus-
tom then practiced of exposing condemned prisoners to
the gaze of the public. He experienced an imprisonment
from the perfidy of Louis Napoleon whose cause he had
espoused, but his patriotism was in no way affected, and
when "the inglorious peace" was declared which was to
rankle in the very heart of France quite to the present
day, Cremieux offered a large part of his means to help
meet the payments which Germany exacted so uncom-
promisingly. Gambetta served M. Cremieux as secretary
and later became his colleague in the Government of Self-
defense.

IN JURISPRUDENCE; STATESMANSHIP; DIPLOMACY 277

A man of scrupulous integrity, of unblemished nobil-
ity, M. Cremieux who had the reputation of always being
ready to aid his race, was inexorable in his attitude
towards those who were guilty of unworthy acts. It is
said that the scalawag who brought accusations against
the Duchess de Berry appealed to M. Cremieux, on the
ground of race, to defend him; but that he was met with
a scornful reprimand for his audacity. But what is still
more remarkable in his career was his quick sympathy
with human distress irrespective of race or creed When,
in their turn, the Christians in the East became the object
of religious persecution, he sent this strong appeal to his
fellow- Jews :

"The Christians of the East are being subjected to
the most horrible persecutions. Tortures, rape, assassina-
tion, pillage, burning; the murder of women, children and
old people even the mutilation of corpses such is the
picture presented by the entire region of Lebanon . . .
Mohammedan fanaticism, even against the wish and forces
of the Turkish Government, is destroying a dense popula-
tion whose sole crime is that they worship the Christ.
French Jews ! let us not await diplomacy; let us be the first
to come to the aid of our Christian brothers" . . .

Even Russia has had its famous Jewish jurists and
statesmen within a century, among them, Emanuel Bank
whose powers as a debater were the wonder of the legal
fraternity. Koni, himself called the "Russian Cicero",
having listened to a famous debate in which Bank took part
spoke of it as "the most brilliant oratorical tournament he
had ever listened to." Bank's memory, especially its
accuracy, has passed into a saying in Russia.

The Asser family of jurists and statesmen, in Hol-
land, have been identified with its legal and political life
for more than a century. Moses S. Asser, in 1798 was a
member of a legislative commission appointed for the re-

278 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

adjustment of the Holland laws to meet the requirements
that arose when the United Provinces were changed into
a Republic under a French protectorate. When the Na-
poleonic code was imposed upon the new Republic, Asser
again became a member of the commission formed by
Louis Bonaparte to draft a commercial code as "part of
the uniform system of laws which was projected for use
throughout the government."

Carel Asser, a member of the same family was one
of the three delegates to the Sanhedrin, called by Na-
poleon in 1807, and for twenty-one years held the post of
referendery of the first class in the department of Justice
at The Hague. The high pinnacle of legal attainment in
this family however, was reached by Tobias M. C. Asser,
who died in Holland in 1913, two years after the Nobel
Peace Prize had been awarded to him. From the begin-
ning of his career, so early as his twenty-third year, Asser
was a man of mark in Dutch jurisprudence. At that time
the Dutch Government made him a member of an inter-
national commission to negotiate a settlement in connec-
tion with the abolition of tolls on the Rhine. Before and
after it became a University he held the Chair of Juris-
prudence at the Athenaeum. He took part in many im-
portant conferences on International Law with distin-
guished foreign authorities before he had attained his
thirtieth year. At thirty-seven he became Assistant Secre-
tary of State holding the office for eighteen years, when
he rose to membership in the highest body in the Dutch
Government, the Council of State.

Nothing could better tell the story of his standing,
his rating in Holland than to glance at the record of the
offices he has filled. In 1905 he was made permanent
Chairman of the Diplomatic Congress on International
law, which Congress was brought into existence mainly
through his efforts. He was delegate to the Peace Con-

IN JURISPRUDENCE; STATESMANSHIP; DIPLOMACY 279

gress that was convened at the Hague in 1899 and pre-
sided over one of its divisions- Asser wrote works on
International Law which before the opening of the present
century had been translated into all the European lan-
guages. Fragments of his most potent speeches are to be
found in the biographies of noted statesmen, which other
statesmen have published during the last two decades.

The records of the Ambassadors to foreign lands
from the United States to come to a glance at the history
of Jewish diplomats of the present who have performed
distinguished public services for the United States every
page of these records of the Honorables Abram I. Elkus,
Oscar S. Straus and Henry Morgenthau, Ambassadors to
Turkey, and of Ira Nelson Morris to Sweden, bears testi-
mony to the consciousness in each of the full weight of
responsibility in his office, and offers proof that each diplo-
mat kept continually before him the axiom that one false
step in diplomacy may disarrange the peace of the world.
As caretakers of the interests of the nation abroad, they
have been perfect stewards of the government, and bene-
factors as well to their fellow-citizens.

A conscientiousness as marked attaches to the serv-
ices of other Jews in the foreign relations of the United
States ; in those of Louis Marshall, an acknowledged great
authority upon international law, who took part in the
Versailles negotiations. Our American Jewish jurists
have their representatives upon the Supreme Court Bench;
they have issued from the leading law schools of the land,
and are active factors in the growth of our legal and legis-
lative systems, trusted alike by clear-seeing non-Jews and
their own religious group.

But previous to the present century the United States
has had her own truly distinguished Jewish jurists and
statesmen. One of the most brilliant names associated
with the practice of law, with the Congress, with the

280 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

period of the Civil War, is that of Judah P. Benjamin,
remembered chiefly in these days for his connection with
the attempt to found a confederacy of the Southern States.
But Mr. Benjamin, long before his activities in that con-
nection, had a nation-wide reputation. A native of St.
Croix, he was brought up in North Carolina, and after-
wards studied at Yale. He was admitted to the bar of
the Territory of Louisiana when he was twenty-one, and
already was recognized as having a philosophical mind and
great reasoning powers. In some respects his early career
resembles that of Beaconsfield, whose junior he was by
seven years. While he made the earliest known "Digest
of the Reported Decisions of the Territory of New Or-
leans", he began life as an agriculturist experimenting in
the extraction of saccharine from sugar-cane.

Quite like certain later adventuring agriculturists
upon the Mississippi border of whose trials we have
spoken, his plantations were ruined by floods, and to reim-
burse himself for his losses, Benjamin took up the practice
of law. He became famous for his handling of the land-
title cases to property in California which was long in liti-
gation. Very shortly he was practising before the
Supreme Court and President Taylor considering him for
a cabinet position. It has been said that President Pierce
offered him an Associate Justice-ship of the United States
Supreme Court. He was then United States Senator from
Louisiana.

Messrs. Nicolay and Hay, in their life of Lincoln de-
scribe Benjamin as one of the ablest and most persistent
of those who were passionately occupied with the establish-
ment of a Southern Government. Famous as an orator in
his day, he has been included in volumes that treat of great
orators. Charles Sumner considered him "the most bril-
liant orator in the United States," and many times the
story has been told of the impression made by his farewell

IN JURISPRUDENCE; STATESMANSHIP; DIPLOMACY 281

speech in the Senate on the dramatic occasion o the with-
drawal of the Southern Senators in 1861. There were pres-
ent in the Senate on that occasion the families of the with-
drawing Senators and representatives from many of the
foreign Governments housed in the Capitol. It is said that
Sir George Cromwell Lewis asked Lord Sherbrooke shortly
afterward: "Have you read Benjamin's speech? It is
better than our own Benjamin [Disraeli] could have done."

That serenity of bearing which so often was remarked
upon in Disraeli was characteristic of Judah P. Benjamin.
To him fell the responsibility of the foreign correspondence
of the young Confederacy, but when arms failed, diplo-
macy was weakened, and when at last the southern group
met failure, Benjamin was obliged to flee the country. His
American property was confiscated and he was proscribed.
From the accounts of Messrs. Nicolay and Hay, Mr. Ben-
jamin, long after his own conviction had been formed that
the cause was lost, clung to the responsibilities he had
assumed. But the wonderful part of his career, the most
remarkable element in his character was still to be re-
vealed. At the age of fifty-five he made his way to Eng-
land, and there, beginning life anew, took up the practice
of law. A few years later, in 1872, he was made Queen's
counsel; and, becoming recognized as one of the leaders
of the English bar, was able to retire, eleven years later,
his fortunes amply repaired and his reputation the highest

Schmoller's saying that "the greatest efficiency of
great men begins after their death" is particularly applic-
able to the case of jurists, statesmen, diplomats. Theirs
is the work, the danger, the accomplishment that the aver-
age man enjoying the benefits of, is yet scarcely aware of.
They are the safeguards of national, international and
individual liberty. A mighty charge, and one in which the
Jew has played a great part and rendered important
services to mankind.

CHAPTER XV
The Jew as Moral Force

"For the whole civilized world the Jewish race
has been the source of all the highest conceptions of
God, man and nature. Through this race was de-
veloped not only the Hebrew religion, but also the
Christian religion. . . . / say that the highest
conceptions of God, man, and nature are all Jewish.
. . . The Jews originated and still preserve the
loftiest descriptions of the attributes of God. For
them, thousands of years ago, He was the one only
God, a pure spirit, infinite in knowledge, power and
good will."

CHARLES W. ELIOT.
(In address delivered at Boston. November, 1905)

IT would be unnecessary, today, .to measure the Jew as a
moral force, but for the overgrowth of erroneous belief
which from time to time is permitted to obscure what
should be left free to the common knowledge. In this
field, he has been assailed, is being assailed with the most
unscrupulous disregard for common consideration, for
truth, forgetful, as some one has said, "of the dangerous
homing tendency of facts".

All races in the course of their development have
arrived at moral codes, at standards of conduct ; but of all
races of which anything is definitely known, only the Jews
merged their moral codes with their religion, adhered to
them, preached and practised them for thousands of years,
from the beginning associating them with their frequent
oblations to God in whom they continually acknowledge
themselves "to live and move and have their being".

Though to adhere to these standards has carried them
literally through stonings and insults, through slavery,
and massacres, pogroms, and revilings and contumely

282

THE JEW AS MORAL FORCE 283

from men even to this third decade of the twentieth cen-
tury, yet to them the ways of the Law of their God have
continued to be accepted as "ways of pleasantness" and
their paths those of "peace/' Their never-flagging mes-
sage to the world has been: "If thou hadst walked in
these ways, thou shouldst have dwelt in peace forever."

The Law and peace: these are the great recurring
words of the Jewish prophets from the beginning. The
keeping of the one produced the other. The thought of
their teachers, their patriarchs and prophets from Abra-
ham to Moses; from Moses to Malachi; from Malachi to
Hillel; from the Galilean, Meir, Maimonides, and on down
through the great list of their inspirational leaders to those
as devoted and heroic today, their continual word to hu-
manity is the attainment of peace through just and right-
eous conduct. One voice dies out but another reiterates the
admonition to their people to learn to distinguish and
choose between right and wrong; to deal and to live
righteously. "Righteousness tendeth to life": "the way
of the transgressors is hard" ; only by the living of a just
and righteous life may the road to peace be found. Every
prophet voice proclaims the same truth. The keeping of
the Law is the starting-point; the goal the attainment of
peace for troubled humanity.

The teachers of the race have always been punctilious
as to the minutiae of conduct. They rebuke the slothful
and the sluggard: the sleeper, the glutton, the tippler, the
vain, the back-biter, him who cheats, who thinks evil in
his heart, as well as those who commit the major sins of
the decalogue. Always the reward of righteousness is
to be able to lie down in green pastures, beside still waters,
the attainment of peace. This was never to be won by the
Jews through warrings and bloodspillings "whoso shed-
deth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed" is one of
their early great commandments but by the right con-

284 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

duct of the individual. Of all the ancient peoples, the Jews
alone visioned a time when swords might be beaten into
ploughshares. Of all modern races it was a Jew whose
plea for world peace touched the Russian Czar in the last
years of the nineteenth century and led to the calling of
the first Peace Conference at The Hague.

Peace and the perfecting of human conduct, of human
character has been the great quest of the race from the
earliest records we may come at. The path to their goal
was alone through their Law which was to be kept in mind
forever. They were exhorted, they are today still ex-
horted to teach this law of conduct, this law of blended
worship of God with just dealing with man, to their chil-
dren; to "talk of it when thou sittest in thy house; when
thou walkest by the way; when thou liest down, and when
thou risest up." "Impractical idealism" say those who
move uneasily under the consciousness that they would
not have the moral stamina to meet such rigorous laws;
yet the Jews go on undeterred. They are "essentially
idealists," Bishop Lawrence has said; and he credits them
with possessing "insight which through the wars, social
revolutions and political overthrows, saw always God's
hand"; with having wrought always "for higher spiritual
truth," and for having "brought the righteousness of
heaven into the affairs of this earth." For sixteen hun-
dred years non- Jewish idealists have drunk at these Jewish
springs, and have been applying the pure religious ethics
of the race, and often its ritual forms, to the building up
of their later religions or faiths.

B'ut how are these facts to be squared with the utter-
ances of the bigots of today, who reach, unfortunately,
the many, where wiser men are heard by but few? A
Bishop may preach to a thoughtful if self-concerned city
congregation, but an irresponsible editor or publisher
may send his manifolded libels into every news-hungry

THE JEW AS MORAL FORCE 285

village of the land; inject his poisonous propaganda into
impressionable minds, and so "mould public opinion" as
to lash the innocent mind which is fundamentally just,
into a fury against a people who have never offended
them; whose only fault is that they have been stung into
a state of sensitive self-defense by incomparable and
unprovoked attacks from amazing sources? The editor
and publisher, it would seem, even more than the minister
with his limited congregation, should hold in mind the
critical importance of the preservation of respectful toler-
ance between the varying groups that form a nation.
Two examples of the acrimonious spirit which such
"authorities" are displaying, suffice to show both the state
of mind of modern Jew-baiters, and the shamelessness
with which they make anything serve their purpose.

An editor of the 'World's Work" complains of the
Jew's "continual communings" with his God. He finds
that it leads the Jew of today to such lengths of devotion
that he would rather go hungry than accept employment
in which he would be obliged to labor on the Sabbath.
Devotion so quixotic in these practical days is incompre-
hensible to this editor. It frets him, and evidently sets
his reasoning powers awry, for he is able to construct out
of these super-religious tendencies of the Jew, qualities
unbefitting to citizenship in the United States. This de-
votion of the Jew to his law and to the customs of his
forefathers, far from appearing to this editorial gentle-
man as a praiseworthy moral example, represents the
opposite to him. We live in an age when other religious
groups have pooled their day of devotion; organized it in
such way as to have it all over and done with, with as little
inconvenience as possible. It rankles him that the Jews
do not act similarly. This complaint is, of course, mere
fretful faultfinding, which, moreover, was once quite
commonly made against the Seventh Day Baptists. When

286 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

we come to the conscienceless attacks upon the Jews
which Mr. Ford of Detroit, Michigan, has launched, we
find a horse of quite another color. He says:

"The Jews are a race that is the moving spirit of
the corruptive, subversive and destructive influences
abroad in the world today"; and, quoting from an alleged
foreign source, he adds: "they have stirred up the peo-
ple in all countries, have incited them to war, revolution
and to communism. . . . Youths, mostly circumcized,
[no data is supplied as to how this fact was obtained]
are often drunk or half drunk/' etc. It is surely unnec-
essary to quote farther from a case so obviously the over-
elaborated labor of prejudice, but it should be quite clear
as to which is the force that at present is making for
subversion, corruption and destruction among the people.

The pity of it is that so many supposably responsi-
ble beings are still willing to act in violation of the laws
and precepts of humanity while with their lips they con-
fess the justice and propriety of these laws ; that so many
are willing to take as true the dogmatic utterances,
which, but a slight examination would usually prove to
be unwarrantable and even entirely baseless. We should
make sure before accepting them, as Walter Bagehot has
outlined it, that such deductions are the truth and nothing
but the truth, for who is not almost sure beforehand, he
asks, by their very fierce dogmatism, that they do not
contain such a mixture of error and truth as to render
it not worth while to spend time in reasoning over them?
"In a word/' he ends, "they are the superfluous energy
of mankind flowing over into fields which might better
be passed by/'

Matthew Arnold wrote that most of the theological
systems that had come up to rasp the world, most of
their extravagances have arisen "out of the talents of
able men for reasoning, and their want not through

THE JEW AS MORAL FORCE 287

lack of talent, for the thing needs none; it needs only
time, trouble, good fortune and a fair mind . . .
their want of literary experience." He has traced at
length in his "Literature and Dogma/' the steady quest
of the Jews for perfect living; for perfect morality; for
closer union with the Eternal: and this by following be-
hind the prophets, as each urges his people to seek for
righteousness and peace. He finds the Jews to be the
one people who have not been led away by the distrac-
tions which merely moral propositions offer to the bril-
liant reasoners along theological lines.

Arnold quotes Ovid as excusing himself for the im-
morality of his verses on the ground that the mention of
the gods has incited them; and, the English poet adds
(a bit mischievously, it must be admitted) "Even at this
time of day, the grave authorities of the University of
Cambridge are so struck by one of them [the god] of
pleasure, life, fecundity . . . that they set it publicly
up as an object for their scholars to fix their minds upon,
and to compose verses in honor of; which is all very well
at present:" Arnold says, "but with this inclination in
the University of Cambridge, and in the Indo-European
race to which they belong, where would they be now if it
had not been for Israel, and the stern check which Israel
put upon the glorification and divinization of this natural
bent of mankind? Going, perhaps, Vice-Chancellor, bedels,
masters, scholars and all, in spite of their Professor of
Moral Philosophy, to the Temple of Aphrodite. It is Israel
and his seriousness that have saved the authorities of the
University of Cambridge from carrying their divinization
of pleasure to these lengths." It may be said with equal
truth that it is this restraining influence of Israel that lies
at the root of the rancor Mr. Chamberlain so indef atigably
displays in his voluminous effort to decry the Jewish race.

Examine into the ethics of the Jew as seen in the

288 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

Scriptures and in the later Rabbinical writings and
notable European University scholars today are urging
an acquaintance with, at least, the literature of Ibn Ezra,
Ibn Gabirol, and Maimonides, Levi ben Gerson, and
Hasdai Crescas, as enlightenment that is necessary to a
comprehension of the New Testament and it will be
found that the most rigorous moral codes ever devised
for human conduct are there imbedded; that they are
devised for the elevation of human character.

The Old Testament ethics are universally applicable
and have been universally applied. They deal with prac-
tically every phase of human thought; they point con-
tinually to the fact that the wages of sin is death; that
the hope of the world lies in the uplift of the individual.
Most of the Jewish kings, like Josiah, "began while
yet young, to seek after the Law". Most of them,
and all of their prophets, have been reformers. Every
time the race has fallen into the error of departing
from their way of worshipping their God, the rebuking
prophet has risen to point them back to God. Hosea,
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezra were the great moral forces
of their times. They roused their people to their
better selves when temptation had overwhelmed them;
when evils had crept in among them that worked
for their undoing, even as many later representatives of
their race have worked, with an energy which is racial,
and affected great moral changes in the modern world.
Ezra and his co-worker, Nehemiah, worked a great moral
reform in Israel, by their call upon their people to return
and pledge themselves anew to their God. Today the
race still feels and the non- Jewish world no less, the
force of those two personalities. Ezra was the Blue
Law man of Jewry, who emphasized the Sabbath laws
which the Jewish people, faithful to the pledges their
forefathers made to him, still adhere to. Many historians

THE JEW AS MORAL FORCE 289

perceive these prophets as agents who have set in motion
currents of religious thought which are still most forceful
in the modern world. It is unnecessary to dwell here
upon the moral force which Jesus, the Teacher, of Jewish
birth, and thought and training, and Paul his follower,
have exercised in the world. They are the foundation
stones on which great Church organizations have risen.

But Jewish teachers did not cease to teach, they did
not cease to be great moral forces in the world with the
destruction of Jerusalem; rather, they, too, entered upon
a new era in their moral life. Name after name arises
in the early and Middle Ages, of great Rabbis who have
left their imprint on their times. They were forces for
enlightenment when the world at large was still battling
with what to our modern eyes seem like the most childish
superstitions. They were teaching forgiveness and for-
bearance even in the face of martyrdom; teaching, too,
human justice, and, above all, just conduct. Justice
Stafford has said of them: "Israel's ideal of justice has
taken permanent possession of the human mind," and he
added to the Jews: "Give up every other claim to the
world's gratitude before you surrender this: The world
owes its conception of Justice to the Jew."

Maimonides, Rabbi, philosopher, scientist, physician,
from his home in Egypt in the twelfth century, was one
of the first to strike a blow at the superstitions of his time
when he denounced astrology as "not a science, but a
disease." His "Guide to the Perplexed" an edition of
which, prepared by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, was brought
out early in the present century, has influenced every
Jewish thinker and many non- Jewish theologians and
students to the present day. Maimonides, like all innova-
tors, was criticized and opposed even by the orthodox of
his own race, who in later generations went back to his
teachings. He is generally regarded as the steadying

290 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

force of his time that safeguarded the Scriptures which
the conflicting and confusing philosophies of his time
threatened to overturn. Aristotelian physics possessed
the scientific minds of the period and threatened the
security of the theory of God on which both Church and
Synagogue rested. It is claimed and evidence exists in
the writings of eminent Church authorities of that day,
that the writings of Moses ben Maimon remained a force
and bulwark of the Church writers for centuries. Cer-
tainly his philosophies formed the mental food of later
thinkers who have enlightened the world.

The Kabbala cult which engaged alike the non-
Jewish and Jewish scholastics of Europe for a century,
arose from Jewish speculative theories. Faulty, mystical,
it was, nevertheless, a progressive step in its day of con-
fused thinking, and of conflicting efforts for the finding
of truth. It has been said that but for the contributions
of the Jewish scholars of the Middle and later ages, inde-
fatigably translating the philosophical deductions of
Greek and Arabian authors and uttering their own, as
well, Europe might still be in the state of conservative
inaction which for so many centuries has bound present
day China in the chains of the past.

A perfect treasurehouse of wisdom in imperishable
sayings have been accrued from the Jewish teachers of
those times, many of which have passed into general
literature: from Ibn Gabirol, Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Halevi
and many others. "He who soweth hatred, soweth
regret"; "Who questions is halfway to wisdom/' are
typical of the progressive and broad-minded spirit of the
Jewish leaders of those days. Abraham Judaeus, an-
other great moral force of his time (the twelfth century)
wrote, it is said, with a wonderful fervor, always exhort-
ing his readers to lead holy lives, and devote them to
purify and to well doing. Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg,

THE JEW AS MORAL FORCE 291

Chief Rabbi of Germany, and called the Father of
Rabbis, was a great spiritual leader of his people through
times very troublous for them. He was a jealous guar-
dian of everything that touched the Jewish honor, and
constantly warned them against descending in their
business transactions from the lofty precepts of their
prophets.

The list of remarkable theologians among the Jews
in the Middle Ages is large, and their contributions to
the philosophical literature was voluminous, especially in
the commentaries of the Scriptures, and in the Aristotelian
debate which occupied so much of the general thought.
It was the time of the discovery of printing; of the multi-
plying of books and the spread of learning. Philosophies
of the ancients were available now for many, and modifi-
cations were taking place in the thought of the world
in many directions. Science, the new element in life, was
making great strides, and opening up intellectual vistas
that previous ages had never dreamed of. A great
influx of Jewish scholars from Spain and Portugal had
taken up their residence in Holland, where speculative
thinkers were especially active. It was from among this
group of Jews of Europe that there was to arise one of
the greatest moral forces of modern times.

Baruch Spinoza has been called "the God-intoxicated
Jew." His life was short, but his influence is already
three centuries long and will last in some degree while
literature lives and men think His forty-four years of
life were spent in poverty, and even in obscurity. "Like
every Jew," as one biographer puts it, "Spinoza learned a
trade"; and while pondering on the mighty thoughts
that were to carry his name down the ages, which were
to be fused thereafter with the life thought of modern
civilization, he polished lenses, and was otherwise in-
terested in optical instruments* He was physically deli-

292 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

cate, like those hollow-chested Jews whom an editor
elsewhere quoted, finds so unpleasant a sight for the eyes
of prosperous Americans to look upon. He lived and
died apart, as another has written, "in the great spiritual
isolation which enabled him to regard human affairs with
complete detachment/' He lived also in continual com-
munion with the Almighty, which would again bring
scoffing from the editor referred to, though from a mil-
lion pulpits each week, of all known faiths, the world
weary are urged to seek their strength in such devotion.
Spinoza had so little in him of that commercial spirit
which is so insistently declared to be characteristic of all
Jews that, while living on six sous a day, he had the
moral courage to refuse a gift of two thousand florins on
the ground that the possession of so much money would
deflect him from his studies and occupations. He was
wont to say: Nature is satisfied with little, and when
she is content, I am so.

It was in lowly surroundings that the great philoso-
pher evolved his doctrine of God as the Imminent Cause
of all things, a doctrine so lucidly put forth that it has
acted magically upon many groping minds since it was
formed, though it brought much woe upon Spinoza him-
self. The gentlest accusations brought against him in
life was that he was a Pantheist*

Much capital has been made of the action of the Jews
of Amsterdam, who, themselves refugees from the perse-
cutions of Spain and Portugal, in turn persecuted Spinoza,
excommunicating him, as the story goes, "with the ana-
thema wherewith Joshua cursed Jericho, with the curse
which Elisha laid upon the children, and with all the curses
which are written in the Law" ; but when this is reached it
leads to recrimination. Religious history is one long para-
dox when matters of this sort are looked into. It is un-
necessary to cite the case of Galileo or the very late cases

THE JEW AS MORAL FORCE 293

of harsh dealing with clergymen whose ripened reason
repudiated items of dogma to which their unripe reason
had earlier subscribed. The history of mankind, of Jews
and of non-Jews proves that every progressive thought
has endangered its utterer. To paraphrase Bergson, our
perceptions of truth widen slowly. The victim of yester-
day's outraged beliefs, today is perceived to have erred
only in seeing a little farther than his fellows. Faraday
pleaded in vain for "the meanest place in which he might
test his scientific theories." He was rejected and put
aside on every hand. Happily, in his case, he lived to
decline the highest honors which the scientific world
which had refused him, afterward desired to confer
upon him.

Spinoza knew no such triumph. He met with op-
pression in life and contumely after death. Hume spoke
of him as a "famous atheist," and it is recorded that
Lessing said of him : "People speak of him as if he were
a dead dog"; and yet, fifty years later, we find Goethe
acknowledging with joy "how much the views of that
great thinker answered the wants of his youth. In
Spinoza," he said, "he found himself, and in him, there-
fore, could he fortify himself to the best advantage."
Spinoza's writings, through their interweaving and
transfusion into the writings of later philosophers, Hegel,
Schelling and others, were to have a large part in color-
ing the philosophic thought of the last and present cen-
turies.

Like Maimonides, Descartes, and Bacon, his prede-
cessors, looking upon the religious disputes which for
centuries had been destroying the peace of the world,
Spinoza shared in the labor of giving to humanity such
freedom as it today possesses from the bondage of super-
stition. His philosophy went far toward uprooting the
hedges which half-seeing theologies had been setting

294 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

about the human mind, and toward leaving the individual
free to seek his God. That there are yet barriers to be
overcome we have conclusive proof in the sectarian and
national walls, overgrown with hideous prejudices,
hatreds and rivalries, that still postpone the coming
together in friendliness of the human family.

Spinoza, followed closely after Descartes, who "led
Europe in the attempt to found a new philosophy based
on reason and not upon past customs," but he rose higher
spiritually. A great moral force, he taught that "minds
are not conquered by armies, but by love and magnanim-
ity"; that "intellectual love of God" is more permanent
than that born of a transitory emotion. His teachings
were caught up in the course of time by the Dutch the-
ologians, among whom a Spinoza school of thought was
founded. Leibniz, first his friend, "veered round" after
Spinoza's death, and joined the groups which proclaimed
the Jewish philosopher an atheist; nevertheless, historians
say, he was the direct beneficiary of Spinoza's moral
force. In an article on "The Philosophy of Leibniz,"
written in 1900 by B. Russell, that author finds passages,
he says, with but slightly changed phraseology, but with-
out acknowledgment, in Leibniz's works, which "contain
the views of the derided Spinoza." "There is but one
philosophy," said Lessing, one hundred years after the
death of Spinoza, "the philosophy of Spinoza." Hegel
declared that to be a philosopher, you must first be a
Spinozist

The name of this Jewish thinker, execrated by eccle-
siastics of all classes, ecclesiastics who now generally are
forgotten, shines out against the skies of his century like a
clear planet. Schleirmacher's fine apostrophe to Spinoza
has often been repeated, but will bear still another telling.
He bids the world "to offer a lock of hair to the manes of
the holy and excommunicated Spinoza." The basis, the

THE JEW AS MORAL FORCE 295

inner kernal, the sum total of this Jewish philosopher's
teaching was that God was in all and all in God, a
thought which permeates all religious thought of today;
which is being preached from every pulpit and which
none disputes.

What is interesting above all else in this "new"
philosophy is that it lies imbedded in the first writings of
the Jews and may be found in Genesis, in the names the
early Hebrews employed to characterize the all-supplying,
all-nourishing Providence, the All-in-All. Spinoza's was
a gospel of love, as well, which gospel has been similarly
incorporated with Jewish teachings from the beginning.
The power of love for one's fellow-men, even for the
beasts of the field, to whom, the patriarchs taught, man
should show pity and give succor, again and again is
emphasized throughout the Old Testament. It has been,
for that matter, theoretically recognized among all
groups of men, by all races and civilizations. Like other
fundamental truths, it is only on rare occasions applied.
Emerson has been quoted as saying: 'Were Christen-
dom to accept the sentiment of love even for a season, it
would bring the felon and the outcast to our side in tears
with the devotion of his faculties to our service. Love
would put a new face on this weary old world in which
we dwell as pagans and enemies too long; and it would
warm the heart to see how fast the vain diplomacy of
statesmen, the impotence of armies and lines of defense
would be superseded by this unarmed Love."

The function and force of the "third Moses," Men-
delssohn, was to dissolve prejudices and to operate for
the political freeing of his people. No man of his time
affected human thought more, or set so many moral
forces in operation, which, threatening and eventually
overturning many of the social inequalities and injustices
that had prevailed in his time, has brought about uni~

296 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

versal suffrage, and a democratic freedom which has
no precedent in world history. The decades of the
nineteenth century, examined one by one, will each, in
turn, show some special Jewish force at work upon the
solving of some moral problem which kept "the people"
bound, or suffering. To the unthinking, the unob-
servant, many of these Jewish forces have been passed
by as "revolutionary"; as troubling the peace of the
world. But every great reforming personality that has
come into the world at some point in his career has been
similarly characterized, whether non- Jewish or Jewish.
What principally matters is: What did this one or that
accomplish to better the condition, spiritually, physically,
for mankind?

It was a "terrible Jew/' Ferdinand Lassalle, a dis-
ciple of Hegel, who proved a moral force in combating
the "iron law of wages," and set in motion the battle
between Capital and Labor, the end of which is not yet
in sight, but the object of which was humane; for it
sought to raise the standard of living for the greater
part of the human family. Today we are so far removed
from the conditions which gave rise to "Social Democ-
racy/' founded by Lassalle, that it is difficult to measure
them. Lassalle believed, and labored for his belief, that
labor as the creator of value in any given product, should
itself receive the value of that product; that wages should
keep pace with that product's increasing value and not
remain confined to fixed terms that furnished but the
barest subsistence for the laborer and his family.

In his day, all but the smallest possible sum returned
to the wage-earner, while the mass of profit went back
to capital in return for its investment Lassalle's problem
was "how to dispense with the interposition of capital so
that labor might secure the profit of its industry" and not
be perpetually limited to a pittance. His work was

THE JEW AS MORAL FORCE 297

humane but necessarily revolutionary, since Capital
clings to its prerogatives and custom had established its
privileges. So dangerous did Lassalle's ideas appear to
Germany, herself a leader in many later struggles, that
when he not only espoused the cause of the working-
classes as a great "Fourth Estate," but foresaw as well
the coming of universal suffrage, all political forces at-
tacked him. Nevertheless, he succeeded in establishing
the "German Labor Organization" mother of all future
labor organizations. After his death, it weakened for
lack of a leader, but his idea had been projected, to
thrive, to live and to spread over the earth, and this by
the moral force of another, born of the same race.

The histories of Jewish moral leaders hold a singu-
lar resemblance to the old Greek torch-races, in which the
mounted participants rushed over their course holding
aloft a flaming torch; and as each reached the end of his
allotted race he flung his torch to him who came after,
who in turn dashed forward with it. Karl Marx caught
up the torch from Lassalle's hand and scarcely a year
after Lassalle had passed away the International Work-
ingmen's Association was founded. Established in 1864,
its progress is known. Today the Labor interests are
active the world over and prophets are not lacking who
declare that the religions of the future will involve tenets
defensive for the workingman's protection.

As the author of Kapital, the moral force of Karl
Marx has tremendously affected modern life. In a com-
paratively recent voting contest for the greatest men of
their day, ten to be selected from a thousand, Marx was
given place among the chosen ones as the greatest
humanitarian of his time. He came in for serious criti-
cism, none the less, for having encouraged the workmen
to take part in the Paris Commune, in 1871. By the
peace-loving of the Jewish race, from whose tenets Marx

298 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

was quite divorced, he has never been held as a Jew, but
his race, none the less, spoke through his great visions
of freedom for the worker and for a more even dis-
tribution of the comforts of life as between the industrial
producer and the moneyed employer.

Few will dispute the moral force which has effec-
tively helped the world in the present day through the
active Jewish mind of Felix Adler. The time has not
arrived for making even an approximate appraisal of all
he has meant and all he means to his generation. Rev-
erent and serious, the offspring of a rabbinical house,
which in itself was a powerful moral force through his
father, Rabbi Samuel Adler of the Temple Emanu-El
of New York City Felix Adler, with charity toward all
and malice toward none, founded the Ethical Culture
movement many years ago, which today has its branch
organizations in many American and European cities.
Beginning with the proposition that moral ends are
supreme above all human ends and interests, the aim of
the Ethical Culture Society has been to teach "that the
moral law has an immediate authority not contingent
upon the truth of religious beliefs, or upon philosophical
theories; and to advance the science and art of right
living/' It does not seek to detach men from their pre-
ferred religious forms, or sects, but only to draw their
attention to the moral problems which each day of life
erects.

Dr. Adler's Society has founded free kindergartens,
a workingman's school. It has undertaken movements
for the improvement of the dwellings of the poor; and
had its important part in securing the adoption in public
schools of courses in science and art; also in manual train-
ing. Unique in its hope and in its organization for the
attaining of it, the Ethical Culture Society is the single
body today that exists for the purpose of uniting men to

THE JEW AS MORAL FORCE 299

their fellowmen in a bond of human understanding, of
mutual comprehension and for the purpose of "linking
up the world's activities in science, art, politics, business
to the supreme ethical end."

Someone has said of Dr. Adler : "He works among
the intellectuals" ; but his true work has been to raise the
intellectual standards, even of workingmen. This is
characteristic of the peculiar democracy of the Jewish
teachers throughout the ages and the world over. It has
been the mission of Jewish Rabbis in America, in every
locality in which they are found domiciled; to raise the
intellectual standard, especially of those new-arrivals in
America from lands where for centuries they have been
denied the opportunity of an education at all comparable
with that open to non-Jews.

No man has left a greater impression Upon the com-
munities that knew him than the late Rabbi Isaac M. Wise,
long identified with the State of Ohio and to whom the
Rabbinical School at Cincinnati stands as a memorial. It
was not enough that the people of his race should be edu-
cated, but he foresaw the need of widening the education
of their teachers. His people were scattered, each group a
law unto itself in matters relating to Synagogue services,
and Judaism, the oldest of all religions, lacked the organi-
zation which was necessary to build it up. Dr. Wise, to
put an end to conditions which were chaotic and lacking in
order, travelled and wrote constantly until he had roused
his people to the point of warmly co-operating with him.
The outcome of his zeal was not only the establishment of
the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, but a fusing and
bringing together of differing groups of Jews which, as
one has said, "had an incalculable effect upon the Jewish
citizens of the United States."

Looking over only the past fifty years of the story of
the Jew as a moral force in America, a record of the

300 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

most unparalleled zeal and unflagging self-sacrifice may
be traced not in the instance of one, but of innumerable
rabbis and teachers of the race. During that period, the
"race-consciousness" and "Jewish organization" which the
vicious have been so industriously misrepresenting, has
spoken steadily through the erection of schools for their
less fortunate members. A great publication society has
been founded, not for the dissemination of "red" literature
as the careless reader of Mr. Ford's recently uttered fiction
about the Jew might infer, but for the spread among the
Jewish people of knowledge of their own wonderful secular
as well as religious literature, of which the non- Jewish
world is at present equally in need. "For most readers"
says R. T. Herford, in the Hibbert Journal, "Rabbinical
or post-Biblical literature is entirely unknown"; but he
speaks also of "the increased attention which is being
given to Jewish literature other than Biblical," and adds
elsewhere that the man who has missed a close study of
the Old Testament is not yet completely educated.

In the great educational campaign which for the past
half century has been conducted by the more fortunate and
highly educated Jews of the world for the enlightenment
of the less fortunate members of their race, many who have
passed on and many of their successors have taken zealous
part. Dr. Jastrow, a member of a violently assailed
group, the Polish Jews, gave a quarter of a century of life
in America to a translation of the Old Testament; partici-
pated in the preparation of the Jewish encyclopedia which
appeared some twenty years ago; and at the same time
taught and preached the moral life to his people. Dr.
Morais, founder of the Jewish Theological Seminary
which stands on University Heights, in New York City,
and President of it until his death; Rabbi David Phillip-
son, Professor Solomon Schechter, Dr. Joseph Krauskopf,
who lectured the length and breadth of the land to raise

THE JEW AS MORAL FORCE 301

funds for his National Farm School, and who was one of
the most beloved and honored Jewish teachers of his time;
Dr. E. G. Hirsch, of Chicago; Rabbis Samuel Schulman,
Joseph Silverman and Stephen S. Wise of New York and
Dr. Henry Berkowitz, Dr. Cyrus Adler of Philadelphia
these and unnumbered Jews of America have been and are
moral forces of incalculable value today. Nor should Dr.
Henry Leipsiger be forgotten, who established "the Peo-
ple's University" Course of Public Lectures under the
auspices of the Board of Education of New York City,
the first course of the kind to be established in any city in
the world. He deservedly must be reckoned a moral force
of as yet incalculable benefit to his community.

But these by no means compass the meaning to the
world today of the Jew as a moral force. A host of Euro-
pean Jewish thinkers are carrying on the "Humanist"
spirit that has distinguished this race through all time.
In everything that has to do with the welfare of mankind
they take and have taken active part.

The Jews again and again are accused of desiring
war, though their efforts, their creed is for peace. "Peace"
is their greeting; the Galilean pressing home this racial
tenet was the "Prince of Peace". Blioch of Russia, wrote
his plea to the nations to take counsel together to devise
some means of preserving perpetual peace among the
nations, which plea bore fruit in the first Hague Con-
ference,

Among today's philosophers, it is again a Jew, Henri
Bergson, who opposes the agnostic tendencies of the times.
Professor Bergson, at Oxford, told his listeners that "but
for the narrow range or weakness of our perceptive
powers" there would be no reason for "philosophy". That,
in itself is a message of hope to humanity. It may look
forward to a time when our perception, now so limited,
will recognize the folly (and worse) of hugging to our

302 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

breasts the asp of racial prejudice, and cause us, for our
own protection, to eliminate this horrid and venomous
thing as thoroughly as we would and do other poisons,
once we have identified them.

John Burroughs named Bergson the "Prophet of the
Soul", His "Creative Evolution", which may be called a
text-book of Bergson's philosophy, has been printed and
reprinted many times. Balfour has mildly objected to the
proposition advanced by this philosopher concerning the
"vital impulse/' that it has no goal more definite than that
of acquiring an ever fuller volume of creative activity";
but to Burroughs, the American philosopher, Bergson has
opened a new world, "and to open a new world to a man
is within the power of unique and original genius only.
Bergson's is a philosophy that goes well with living
things," Burroughs wrote. "It is a living philosophy
. . . an interpretation of biology and natural history
[presented] in terms of the ideal. In reading him I am
in a concrete world of life, bathed in the light of the high-
est heaven of thought. It exhilarates me like a bath in the
stream or a walk on the hills. Those who go to Bergson
for scientific conclusions only, will find bread where they
were unconsciously looking for a stone; but those who go
to him in the spirit of life, will see him work a change in
scientific facts like that which life works in inorganic
matter."

Nothing could better demonstrate the honor in which
M. Bergson is held by his contemporaries than the digni-
ties that have been conferred upon him in the last fifteen
years. Named President of the French Academy of Moral
and Political Science in 1914, he became, in 1917 a member
of the Clemenceau Cabinet, and, among many degrees
awarded him by the universities of the world was that by
Cambridge, of the doctor's degree honoris causa. In 1922
he was elected President of the Commission of the League

THE JEW AS MORAL FORCE 303

of Nations for Intellectual Intercourse among the Nations.
He is thus appraised by the world as a great teacher, an
inspired philosopher. He is no less valued as a literary
artist. "His method" writes Burroughs, so well able to
sum up the work of a fellow-craftsman, "is always such
that, looking at the processes of organic evolution through
his eyes is like looking into the mental and spiritual
processes of a great creative artist. He is sui generis.
. . . One cannot read far without being carried into
the poetic and romantic ... the world of organic
nature is seen for the first time through the creative imag-
ination of a great literary artist and philosopher combined.
For his competent reader" Burroughs adds, "Bergson re-
creates the world by showing it as issuing like a living
stream from the primal, cosmic energy".

Certainly to the student of philosophic literature the
newness, the vigor and grace of Bergson's literary man-
ner, and his fresh imagery have proven powerfully attrac-
tive, and have made him, in two decades, a moral force
throughout the world. He is the latest flowering of the
Jewish mind. May not the race's contributions on the
moral side, to the civilization we know today, safely be
placed in the balance?

CHAPTER XVI
Summary

"Here is a great body of our Jewish citizens from
whom have sprung men of genius in every walk of our
varied life; men who have become part of the very
stuff of America; who have conceived its ideals with
singular clearness, and led its enterprises with spirit
and sagctcity. They are playing a particularly con-
spicuous part in building up the very prosperity of
which our Government has so great a stake in its
dealings with the Russian Government with regard
to the rights of men. They are not Jews in America;
they are American citizens. In this great mcttter with
which we deal tonight, we speak for them as for rep-
resentatives and champions of principles which under-
lie the very structure of our Government. They have
suddenly become representatives for us all By our
action for them shall be tested our sincerity, our gen-
uineness, the reality of principle among us"

WOODROW WILSON.

(In an address before the Committee on Foreign Affairs,
House of Representatives, December, 1911)

IN approaching the closing paragraphs of this book
there comes a keen awareness of how inadequate, after
all, has been the effort here made to the task undertaken,
in view of the power of the ignoble to sway the more im-
pressionable minds. To excuse the violence of their own
rancor, to what ends have the enemies of the Jews not
gone in misrepresentation, in vilification? In the fifteenth
century the same class offered such excuses as these for
the pillage and massacre of their fellow-men: "This
accursed race were unwilling to bring their children
to be baptized. . . . They dressed their stews and other
dishes with oil instead of lard; abstained from pork; kept
the Passover; ate meat in Lent; sent oil to replenish the
lamps in their synagogues; with many other abominable
ceremonies of their religion, etc.,

SUMMARY 305

Looking back at the printed spleen of today will
future humanity have reason to feel that this age really
had progressed beyond that earlier one? What will it
think of the Beilis case, in Russia, so late as 1911-13, when
race hatred and superstition spoke again so cruelly, with
such a vicious disregard for human life as to draw a pro-
test from the just-minded of the world against the persecu-
tion of a race, the near-martyrdom of a Jew, most obvious-
ly innocent, upon a flimsily concocted charge of having
murdered a boy for ritual purposes? It was the old Apion
charge of two thousand years ago. Well did Great Britain,
under the signatures of hundreds of her greatest men pro-
test: "This blood accusation is a relic of the days of witch-
craft, a cruel and utterly baseless libel on Judaism and an
insult to Western culture/' Again : 'We deem it our duty"
ran the German protest, this, too, fortified with the names
of her most thoughtful men, 55 to protest against that
unscrupulous fiction spread among the people, and which
has, from the Middle Ages until recent times led the
ignorant masses to outrage and massacre, and has driven
misguided crowds to stain themselves with the innocent
blood of their Jewish fellow-men. We deem it the duty"
continued this memorable paper, "of everyone to whom
the moral progress of mankind is dear, to raise his voice
against such deplorable occurrences/'

Similarly France and the United States denounced
this sowing of ancient superstitions, the first declaring that
"so far from requiring blood for its rites, the religion of
Israel prohibits its use both for ceremonial purposes and
for food, and this absolute prohibition is rigorously re-
spected by all Jewish sects/' The second added a
lengthened testimony as to the lack of foundation for this
especially spiteful accusation. "It has been subjected,"
said the American protest, "to the most careful investiga-
tion for centuries, and no evidence warranting the slight-

306 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

est credence has ever been discovered. As history shows,
the same accusation was frequently directed against the
early Christians." "Invented by hate" runs another pro-
test, as ably signed, "adopted by blind ignorance, the
absurd invention has become an instrument of enmity and
dissension even between Christians themselves. The po-
groms caused by it have drawn a trail of blood through
the history of this era."

Grotius, whose aim was to substitute reason for un-
bridled rancour, light for darkness, said that no man's life
was of such importance as to violate the general rule of
forbearance by which the peace and safety of the indi-
vidual is secured; and he referred frequently to his prede-
cessors in the search for peace, to the Jewish writers;
notably to Moses Maimonides' "Guide for Doubtf^t,l Cases"
as he interprets the great work written by Maimonides in
the twelfth century. Today, ignoring the recognition of
the wise, which clearly proves the Jews to have been, from
the beginning of time and the violent anti-Semites insist
again and again that the Jews have not changed character
in thousands of years the advocates of peace, and of
reason. "Come, let us reason together," were the Israelite
Prophet's words, which Grotius returned to when he, as
David J. Hill has said, "sought to create a system of illu-
minating principles to light the way to the paths of peace
and general concord; to make intelligence triumph over
irrational impulses and barbarous propensities."

Today, unfortunately, and universally, social facts
have become so disordered, that the reasoning of the
world itself would seem to have ceased to function. How
will the unthinking, with only their prejudices to guide
them, react to the confidant and bold assertions which have
been made of the existence of a world-wide plot among the
Jews to pollute the morals of the human family? These
insidious statements, made upon the authority of the

SUMMARY 307

"Protocols" since proved to have been instruments not of
the Jew, but of the enemies of the Jews, have been sent
into every hamlet of the United States. The first knowl-
edge which the present writer had of this "Jewish Peril/'
was received from a little town in Alabama which, since,
has heard nothing of the fraudulent character of the docu-
ments on which most heinous charges have been made,
though such information should have been forthcoming to
stop the growth of the evil those charges gave rise to.

Nothing could be more illogical, when you come to
examine into it, than that a race, religion-bound for
thousands of years, which has suffered martyrdom for
the preservation of that religion, which has, as the tap-
root of its racial strength the most devoted love and
preservation of the family which, as its enemies insist,
cultivates and holds to its ancestral habits and faith even
at loss to itself should now, in the twentieth century be
occupied with a diabolical scheme which could only cul-
minate in its own destruction, and this for the following
reasons: The accusation on which so many other cruel
charges have been founded declares that the proposed pol-
lution of the world will be through literature; through
degrading art; through the theatre; through evil-arousing
music by which the morale of non- Jewish humanity will
be undone to such an extent that the subjection of the
great mass will be easy, and the rise of the Jew to im-
perial power even more so. But, look at the facts, which
may be obtained from any statistical librarian today. It
will be found that the great mass of eager readers are
the Jewish young. Can they read pernicious matter
without their own race being "poisoned at the very
spring" ?

There is no class or group in the world today which
spends so liberally, according to its numbers, at the
theatre; at the moving pictures; in the support of music.

308 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

As the Jews in America, among the hundred million and
more citizens o the United States alone, are an exceed-
ingly small group, were a large percentage of that small
group to give themselves up to the re-enacting of the
lessons of salacious and immoral plays, to those of un-
worthy pictures, to evil literature and so forth, who but
the race itself, is injured? Some degraded Jews may, for
profit, engage in the purveying of the venal, but against
them there is a great army of Jews who protest them.
This was the conspicuous case awhile ago in New York
City, when a devout Rabbi took the lead in applying to
the courts for the closing of a play written and produced
by members of his own race.

The facts in connection with the Jewish family life
should be sufficient to refute these abominable charges.
The foundations of such solidarity as has existed among
Jews for ages has lain in their safeguarding of their
home from just such pollutions. "God dwells in a pure
and loving home" is a basic saying in the sacred writings
of this people. Down to their great Dispersion, when
families were ruthlessly torn apart, and children bunched
and flung indiscriminately together, were carried in one
direction while their parents were scattered in others, the
one idea of the Jewish people was the close co-operation
of the family. It was the old patriarchal idea which led
Abraham, in coming out from Chaldea, to take with him
every member of his family. With the Jewish people
family-building, race-building was a natural instinct.
"In their family relationships/* said ex-President Eliot,
some years ago, "the Jews are singularly pure, tender
and devoted. This, in part, may be a consequence of the
cruel persecutions to which almost all Jewish communi-
ties have been, first or last, subjected. Each family was
bound together by the pressure of external wrongs, and
only in the family home could consolation and hope be

SUMMARY 309

found; but, clearly, their religion fostered filial piety."
Bishop Lawrence, commenting on this statement, con-
curred with it, saying: "Allow me to emphasize what
President Eliot has already mentioned and what was in
my mind to say, that the integrity of the family for which
the Jew has always stood is a tradition of the greatest
value to this day and nation."

Someone has said that the observances of the Jewish
faith are so entwined with everyday customs in the home
as to make the Jewish religion and the family life a
unity, bound together in sanctity. Nor can it be over-
looked that the history of the Jews reveals on its every
page exacting fundamental principles of righteous con-
duct, which must be held to if Judaism is not to die from
the earth. They find their punishment for deflexion from
these rules marked clearly in their own histories. Every
time great numbers of the race have fallen away from the
practice of virtue the hand of God has smitten them. A
notable Jewish scholar has been heard to express the
thought that the luxury which obtained in Spain, being
far removed from the simple precepts of the Jewish relig-
ion, had caused a pride in his race which brought its
antidote in expulsion. This is the noblest of humility; it
is the signature of greatness on this people, that in each
crisis of its history it has held true and sincere men who
have gathered the fragments of the race together again,
and in humility and renewing faith they have gone back to
their first and eternal principles.

Where the Jew has fallen away from a faithful
adherence of his religion, even when he has wandered
into the avenues of "free thought" which, during some
periods, allure both Jew and non-Jew, even those who
have foresworn their membership with the Jewish relig-
ion, maintain, nevertheless, their ideal of family love,
and it is rare indeed that they do not extend a quick

310 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

sympathy to their own kind in trouble. Heine measured
what are called the happinesses of life through his own
childhood and youthful experiences in "the charm of true
Jewish family life" which his memory dwells upon. "If
pride of descent were not a foolish contradiction/' he
wrote, "I might feel proud that my progenitors were
members of the noble house of Israel, and I a descen-
dant of those martyrs who have given the world a God
and a morality/ 5

A volume might be written on the Jewish woman as
exemplar in the home; as indefatigable social and wel-
fare worker; as an educational force and contributor to
modern art and letters. A friendly examination into
their women's part in the race's life and history will
reveal a procession of remarkable heroines though we
begin no further back than with the classic "mother in
Israel/' Deborah, the warrior matron whose fame by
thousands of years preceded and exceeded that of Jeanne
d' Arc, and whose war song has placed her among the
immortals. Judah has its companion, too, to the Mother
of the Gracchi, in the wife of Rabbi Meir, who lived in
the second century. It has not been esteemed beneath
the dignity of the assailers of the modern Jew Jo go back
to the Middle Ages to attack a very delightful human
character, one Gliickel, whose life was full of vicissitudes,
and whose devotion and courage and wit as wife and
mother make her a classic example of which any race
might be proud. Judith Montefiore and the Baroness de
Hirsch were both heroic women, and women, too, who
left great impress on their times for their practical work
for mankind. New York has its monument to Julia Rich-
man, long identified with the Public School system of
that city, in the Julia Richman High School. Someone
has called attention to the fact that of the three great
nations of antiquity, neither Greece nor Rome has in its

SUMMARY 311

history, or associated with its glory a feminine figurt
which humanity has exalted as it has exalted the Jewess,
Mary.

This, however, is but another instance of the incon-
sistency of a world hating its victim, while possessing
itself of that victim's most valued treasures. The world
has appropriated to its use the Jew's scriptures; his
prophets ; his teaching, his services in a hundred fields ; a
supreme example, it would seem, of men's inhumanity
and ingratitude to man. It furnishes, indeed, the para-
dox of the ages. "The whole Christian Church," Bishop
Lawrence once said, "is under obligation to the faith,
history and traditions of the Hebrews. I cannot forget
that every time we offer our prayers and praises in our
Christian Churches, we are expressing our faith in the
language of the ancient and chosen people. From the
beginning to the end of the service, the Psalter, lessons,
prayers and hymns are either in the very words of the
Jewish lawgivers, singers and prophets, or else saturated
with their thought and character." The same might be
said and amplified by other Christian sects ; yet how many
who follow the religions of our era, appear, as Goethe
said, to feel "that the descent of the Holy Spirit was in
the form of a vulture and not in that of a dove!" And
this interpretation of that descent has gone on the world
over, especially in Christendom,

Bayard Taylor, visiting Jerusalem in the middle
forties of last century, wrote of what he saw there, as
follows: "Here, although the Jews freely permit Chris-
tians to enter their synagogue, a Jew who should enter
the Holy Sepulchre would be lucky if he escaped with his
life. Not long since, an Englishman who was mistaken
for a Jew was so severely beaten that he was confined to
his bed for two months. What worse than scandal,"
exclaims Mr. Taylor. "What abomination that the spot

312 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

looked upon by many Christians as the most awfully
sacred on earth, should be the scene of such brutish
intolerance!" This was told of conditions that existed
less than a hundred years ago; and recent travellers, less
horrified, but more cynical, report a not greatly altered
attitude on the part of those who watch over the hal-
lowed (!) spot.

Moses Mendelssohn has left a pathetic picture of the
experiences of his family in a letter to his friend
Winkopp. "Papa," asked his children, returning from a
walk, "why do those boys throw stones at us? Why do
they run after us and call us 'J ew -boy! Jew-boy'? Is it
a disgrace -to be a Jew-boy, Papa?"

This was happening in Berlin nearly two hundred
years ago; and notwithstanding the world has progressed
so mightily in material things, its non- Jewish children are
still being taught that which leads them to pursue Jewish
children with the cry: "Dirty Jew!" and "Christ-ldller."
This is happening in orderly countries in conservative
towns the modern world over. It is happening daily in
the streets of our great cities, and adults smile at it when
they do no more. The first thing that Jewish and non-
Jewish children become aware of as they get to the
school age is the right of the one to attack, to deride and
to mistreat, and the need for the other sometimes to weep
and chafe under sneers and taunts; to withdraw from,
mistrust and resent. If here and there an embittered Jew
"kicks over the traces," where is the wonder ? You cannot
gather figs of thistles.

The more the question is studied, the more it will be
recognized that evil passions and prejudices continue
among the peoples of the earth because from their first
apprehending days they are imposed upon the child mind
let us hope not with a deliberate intention to hoodwink
or mislead, but certainly with a thoughtless indifference

SUMMARY 313

as to the wrong twist it may give to the individual's
mind in the future. " 'Tis education forms the common
mind; just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined/' was a
truth recognized long before Pope so phrased it; yet
the warring* ideals of Rome, and those of Greece where
the killing of a fellow-man was an heroic art and lust a
godly attribute though they led Rome to ruin and
Greece to decay, are still held high before the child's and
youth's mind, while the moral ideals of Israel, whether
through the prophets or the Nazarene, never more com-
monly and theoretically acknowledged than today (if we
may measure it by the Church edifices that stand as
monuments to them the world over) are left as bones for
theologians to quarrel over, and only come to light from
time to time as they issue from such debates in the form
of isms, schisms, sophisms and fanaticisms. Is this a
too radical stand to take? But in false education lie the
evils of race hatreds which today trouble mankind. It
begins about the roots of life, entering the minds of chil-
dren, and there thriving and multiplying for a lifetime.
This evil can only be eliminated, if at all, by probing to
those roots, and cutting the evil out; tares sown, cannot
yield wheat. That is common knowledge.

"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" all of
the ten "Thou shalt nots," preach the "natural laws of
equity which are common to all races". Confucius taught
the overcoming of evil by good; Buddha said: "Let a
man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil with
good. For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time;
hatred ceases only by love." Hillel preached the refrain-
ing from harming others. Every prophet and priest who
has labored for humanity has taught the same lesson in
almost identical words, even before the teachings of
Jesus, which incorporated the wisdom of his race. He
re-affirmed its truths, and simplified them for the people.

314 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

Always he stressed the all-important necessity that will
always exist for forbearance, for forgiveness; for the
need of personal purity before casting the stone of re-
proach; for removing the mote from our own eye before
concerning ourselves with the beam in that of our neigh-
bor's. Forgiveness was his theme, as it had been that
of the Prophets of Israel. Not theirs to punish those
who injured, but God's. "Vengeance is mine. I will
repay, saith the Lord of Hosts/' was the ancient equiva-
lent for a truth which is everywhere preached today:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and
leave the working out of Justice to the Divine.

One of the most impressive of all the Galilean's
teachings was that offenses would continue to come in
the world, "but woe to him through whom they come!
It were better for him," he said, "that a millstone were
hung about his neck and he cast into the sea than that he
should offend one of these little ones." Yet what greater
offense can be put upon the innocents than that they
should be saddled, from their first lispings, with racial
and religious prejudices against any group of their fellow-
men? What greater offense to young minds than that
the Pauline doctrine of "Christ Crucified" should be sub-
stituted in their first lessons for that of Jesus who taught of
forgiving love that love and forgiveness should be applied
even unto seventy times seven? Those lessons he continued
to teach unless we are to discount the truth of the Gos-
pels through which his teachings and story have come
when, even on the cross, he said: "Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do," That prayer was not for
sinning Jews, as so many prefer to believe, but for a sin-
ning world. Its mixed representatives stood around on
Calvary, Romans and others, jeering and sharing in the
thing done. It is a prayer which many victims of the
savagery of zealots, Jews and non-Jews, have since

SUMMARY 315

uttered. Prescott alludes to the shedding of Christian
blood by Christians, as well as to the racial crimes that
stain the present era's past, saying: "In every country
the most fiendish passions are kindled in the name of
religion/'

That prayer upon the cross is one that should be
prayed with especial fervor today, on behalf of those who
are responsible for the vicious appeals to racial anti-
pathies which have been flooding our bookshelves. These
new prophets of hatred and persecution, are the real
menaces to the peace of the world. Enmity, not amity, is
their creed, as Spencer has said, who saw clearly that
men "merely believe that they believe in the religion of
amity."

There is not a statesman today who does not
realize the need for freeing the world from its age-long
fetters of racial, religious and class strife. But how go
about it? Wise men on every side see the weakness of a
civilization divided against itself. They recognize that
world peace will never be attained until such time as
shall see these artificial barriers down, and each man able
to look into his brother-man's eyes in confidence and
trust; but how is that happy state to be reached when,
individuals may project the most distorted ideas, broad-
casting them into this and that even remote corner of
the world, for the unblushing purpose of increasing the
circulation of a weekly, or creating a demand for a
book? Nations are not secure that are made up of groups
warring with one another. To make a country strong
there is need for its citizens to be brought together,
to be bound together by a common understanding and
by such common service as will insure a mutual re-
spect. It is declared by the hopeless, that racial strife
is ineradicable; that to try to stop it is as futile as
was Canute's command to the inrolling waves* But we

316 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

know that given the will all things are possible. Duelling
has been put out of fashion ever since the reason of the
world cleared, and the folly of it was perceived. Those
who still persist in fighting duels are no longer heroes of
romance, but weaklings in reasoning upon whom the
world will scarce waste a shrug of the shoulder. The
Italian vendetta is heard of no more. Even the peasantry,
their education widening, perceive the utter uselessness of
life-wasting and the still worse undermining of national
life by the carrying on of hatreds. Feuds among Ameri-
can mountain groups, which were once transmitted from
generation to generation, have ceased to be the fashion
even in the back counties of Kentucky and Tennessee.

Coming back to charges against the Jews which
should be touched upon here : In a screed published by
Mr. Ford and quoted elsewhere, a group of Jews in
Russia are described as being "drunk or half drunk" and,
by implication, the race is accused of a propensity to
excessive drinking. But the facts are: From the begin-
ning of history, in matters appertaining to the appetite,
the Jews have been and are models of sobriety. Samuel-
son, writing on the History of Drink, says that the Jews
are notoriously a sober race, which is due to two causes ;
first, their partial isolation from other religious groups
has had a tendency to make them more careful of their
morals, and, second, and the more important reason has
been that they do not follow occupations that require
great physical exertion. "On the whole," he says, "they
are a sober and exemplary race whose habits in this
respect are worthy of universal imitation." Dr. Norman
Kerr, another observer of the race, has said: "I have
never seen a case against this distinctive people of a
strong impulse to alcoholism or other narcotism." Pro-
fessor Commons, in summing up the tendencies of immi-
grant races, and naming them in the order to which they

SUMMARY 317

are addicted to this or that weakness, names nine in his
list of drinking groups, and names the Jews ninth. It is
unnecessary to adduce further testimony in a case which
is readily open to examination through hospital and
prison statistics.

Let us, too, in hastening to our close, glance at the
charge of duplicity and evasiveness uttered in various
tones by the 'World's Work" author, and Messrs. Belloc,
Chamberlain and Ford, and which stresses, in particular,
, the fact that Jews enter a country as "natives" of this or
that other country, when, in fact, they should enter as
"Jews." "Why do they not sign themselves Jews?" cry the
frenzied, and elaborate their complaint until the incom-
ing stranger has begun to look like a menace and
criminal. What are the facts? These: that the United
States Immigration Laws neither require nor record the
religious faith of intending settlers in this country. They
do require and record the country of birth and of citizen-
allegiance of such entrants ; but, in addition, the Jews have
no alternative in the matter of not naming themselves
"Jews" in the majority of European countries, where, so
late as 1919, they were prohibited from filling out the cen-
sorship blanks as "Jews," which, by preceding practice they
were forbidden equally to omit doing. They were, for
instance, compelled to fill out such documents as "Ger-
mans," or "Czechs." Acting in conformity with the law
in emigrating from those countries, they had no choice
but to register in the same manner, as citizens of the
countries in which they had been born or long domiciled.
As such, and in, good faith, they have arrived at their
destination only to be met with accusations of intentional
deception.

Like other immigrants, the Jew, with few exceptions,
comes here to gain health, home, education for him-
self and his children; willing to attain them by fru-

318 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

gality and industry, but unable to turn aside the harm-
ful suggestions o the unfriendly, by his unacquaint-
ance with English. Looking into forbidding and doubt-
ing eyes, the only defense of these immigrants is to
shrink back among themselves, so beginning that "exclu-
siveness" which gives ground for new complaint. The
Jews from the Levant have come in for especially
malevolent suspicions because they linger in the sea-board
towns, while the German Jews are praised or blamed,
according to the mood of the critic, because they have
gone in larger numbers inland. None enquires into the
reason for the choice in either case. It is so much easier
to insinuate into tHe public consciousness the idea that they
are gathering in special places as part of a plot to undo
modern civilization. The fact is tHa? German Jews go
inland in greater numbers because as a people, the Ger-
mans are inland dwellers. Their coast line is not large;
whereas tEe Eevantines for centuries have lived and
traded in the coast cities of the Mediterranean. Each
merely follows, in his new home his earlier habits until a
confidence comes that he will not be molested.

It is this confidence that tEe representative Jews of
America have trusted and are seeking to instil in the new-
comers. Their zeal is seen on every side to raise the
standard of living and of character in the late arrivals
here. They are quite as aware as impatient critics could
be of the newcomers' shortcomings; of their often un-
couth and fear-stamped manners. Sir C G. Montefiore
has made a passionate appeal for just this class of the
poor of Eis people, in a recent number of the Hibbert
Journal :

"Give the Jew, even for a short time," he writes,
"a respite from hatred and prejudice . . . and there
is no reason to suppose that these various products of
disability and persecution will not entirely disappear. . . .

SUMMARY 319

Where every man's hand is against you, you may be
tempted to hit back. It does no good but you may yield
to the temptation. Is it too much to ask of Christendom
after centuries of persecution, a few years of patience?
Certain ugly characteristics of the hunted animal fear,
cunning, untruthfulness may have shown themselves
in a few Jews . . . but the Jew learns very quickly.
Indicate to him what you want him to learn and that you
will welcome his learning. Even as things are the learn-
ing is going on apace. Give them a little encouragement;
a little surcease from suspicion and hatred; a little breath-
ing space.

"Anti-Semitism tends to make IHe people it Hates
worthy, at last, of hatred; for hatred will breed hatred,
and suspicion will breed suspicion. Equality, fairness,
love these are curative. To make the Jews as like you
as possible, treat them as fellow-citizens. They will soon
resemble you in your failings as well as in your virtues/'

Apropos of the effect upon both the body and the
soul of the Jew, of long continued oppression and its off-
spring, a manner of fear and suspicion, as well as resent-
ment and general coarsening, Bayard Taylor Has left a
peculiarly valuable testimony in his work earlier referred
to. "The native Jewish families in Jerusalem, as well as
those in other parts of Palestine/' he writes, "present a
marked difference to tHe Jews of Europe and America.
They possess the 'same physical characteristics the dark,
oblong eye and prominent nose, the strongly-marked
cheek and jaw but in the latter these traits Have become
harsh and coarse. Centuries devoted to tHe most r de-
basing forms of traffic, witK tfie endurance oJ persecution
and contumely, Have greatly cKanged and vulgarized the
appearance of tfie race. But tfie Jews o'f tHe Holy City
still retain a noble beauty, whicfi proved to my mind their
descent from tHe ancient princely Houses o'f Israel. THe

320 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

forehead is loftier, the eye larger and more frank in its
expression, the nose more delicate in its prominence, and
the face a purer oval. I have remarked the same dis-
tinction in the countenances of those Jewish families of
Europe, whose members have devoted themselves to Art
or Literature. Mendelssohn's was a face that might have
belonged to the House of David."

And Mr. Taylor adds a description of a Jerusalem
experience which is even more memorable. He writes:

"On the evening of my arrival in the city, as I set
out to walk through the bazaars, I encountered a native
Jew, whose face will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I was sauntering along, asking myself 'Is this Jerusa-
lem?', when, raising my eyes, they met those of Christ!
It was the very face which Raphael has painted the
traditional features of the Savior, as they are recognized
and accepted by all Christendom. The waving brown
hair, partly hidden by a Jewish cap, fell clustering about
the ears; the face was the most perfect oval, and almost
feminine in the purity of its outline; the serene, childlike
mouth was shaded with a light moustache, and a silky
brown beard clothed the chin; but the eyes shall I ever
look into such orbs again? Large,. dark, unfathomable,
they beamed with an expression of divine love, and
divine sorrow, such as I never before saw in a human
face. The man Had just emerged from a dark archway,
and tHe golden glow of sunset, reflected from a white
wall above, 'fell upon his 'face. Perhaps it was this
transfiguration which made his beauty so unearthly; but
during the moment tEat I Saw him, he was to me a
revelation o? the Savior. There was still miracles in the
land of Ju'dak As the dusk gathered in the deep streets,
I could see nothing but the ineffable sweetness and be-
nignity of that countenance, and my friend was not a

SUMMARY 321

little astonished, when I said to him with the earnestness
of belief, on my return: 1 have just seen Christ!' "

Not all, perhaps, can rise to the rhapsody of the
poet and so see God in their fellow-man; but all seekers
of truth ,can find good in him, if they truly seek it. Not
in diplomacy, but in good faith between man and man,
will world peace be found. _J3eod' faith, said Grotius, is
"the keystone b\j&idfme larger society of nations is
united." It does not exist when the better element in a
nation or community by silence gives a tacit consent to
the persecution by one group of another.

This volume goes out into the world with a great wish
that^t may incite the conservative good who have been
negative to the thought of a better understanding of their
neighbor, the Jew, to take part in the suppression of those
forces for evil which would set the nation, and the na-
tions, once more upon a course of Middle Ages persecu-
tion. We have our special days of celebration and prayer ;
our Hospital Sunday; our Mother's Day; our Flag Day;
our Independence Day. Fancy what might happen if but
one nation were to inaugurate the setting apart of a single
Better Understanding Day, seeing to it that on that day all
teachers, preachers and spiritual pastors and masters, yes,
and the editorial teachers as well, shall concentrate their
thought upon the bringing about of peace on earth
and good will among men! The outcome of even
a single hour so set apart in a year, of a single honest
thought sent forth with the concentrated force of the
world each human being led to consider the need for
mutual kindness, the existence of mutual rights and the
duty of protecting them ah, there is no way of measuring
it ! Then, indeed, might we hope to see swords beaten into
plowshares, and that universal peace established for which
men and nations pray.

THE END

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The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. E. C. K.

CONNER.
History of the Jews, translated by Bella Lowy and various others.

H. GRAETZ. Philadelphia 1891.
The Rights of War and Peace, with Introduction by David T. Hill.

HUGO GROTIUS. London and New York 1904.
Post-Biblical Hebrew Literature, BENZION HALPER. Philadelphia

1921.

The Spirit of the Ghetto. HUTCHINS HAPGOOD. New York 1902.
The Yoke of the Torah. HENRY HARLAND. New York 1885.
Music and Morals. H. R. HAWEIS. New York 1899.
The Jews and the English Law. H. S. Q. HENRIQUES. London

1908.

The Mendelssohn Family. SEBASTION HENSEL. New York 1882.
Christianity in Talmud and Midrash. R. T. HERFORD. London

1903.

Pharisaism. R. T. HERFORD. London and New York 1912.
Antiquities of the Jews. Whiston's Translation. FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS.

London 1900.

The Works of Philo. PHILO-JUDAEUS 1896.
Critique of Pure Reason. IMMANUEL KANT.
Dynastic America. HENRY H. KLEIN; New York 192L
Prejudice; its Genesis and Exodus. JOSEPH KRAUSKOPF. Philo

delphia 1909.
History of European Morals. W. E. H. LECKY. London, N. Y.

Reprint 1921.
MacMillan's Guide to Palestine and Syria. MACMILLAN. London

1911.
Guide to the Perplexed. Translated by M. Friedlander. MOSES

MAIMONIDES. New York 1919.

The European Commonwealth. J. A. R. MARRIOTT. London 1918.
A Study of Spinoza. JAMES MARTINEAU. London 1883.
Liberal Judaism and Hellenism. CLAUD GOLDSMID MONTEFIORE.

London 1903.

Aspects of Judaism. C. G. MONTEFIORE.

Life of Disraeli. WILLIAM FLAVELLE MONYPENNY. London 1910.
History of Religions. GEORGE F. MOORE. New York 1920.
Interpretation of History. MAX NORDAU. London 1910.
Stories and Pictures. ISAAC LOEB PEREZ. Philadelphia 1906.
The Jews in America. MADISON C. PETERS. Philadelphia 1905.

324 THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

Researches in Sinai. WILLIAM M. F. PETRIE. London 1906.

History of the People of Israel. ERNEST REN AN. London 1891.

Fresh Light from Ancient Monuments. A. H. SAYCE. New York
1895.

'Races of the Old Testament. A. H. SAYCE. 1891.

Studies in Judaism. SOLOMON SCHECTER. Philadelphia 1908.

History of Jewish People in the Time of Jesus. E. SCHURER.
Edinburgh 1892.

The Prophets in Israel and Their Place in History. W. ROBERT-
SON SMITH. London, 1895.

The Jew and American Ideals. JOHN SPARGO. New York 1921.

The Nature and Elements of Poetry, Lectures delivered before
Johns Hopkins University. EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.
Boston 1895.

The Tragedy of Dreyfus. G. W. STEEVENS. New York 1899.

The Renaissance of Hebrew Literature. NAHUM SLOUSCH. Phila-
delphia 1909.

Education of Ancient Israel. FLETCHER H. SWIFT. London.

The Land of the Saracens. BAYARD TAYLOR. New York 1855.

Prolegomena to the History of Israel. J. WELLHAUSEN. London
1885.

Sketch of the History of Israel and Judah. J. WELLHAUSEN.

Outline of History. H. G. WELLS 192L

Zangwill's Jewish Works complete. ISRAEL ZANGWILL. Philadel-
phia.

INDEX

Aaron, of Lincoln, 92

Abbot, Lyman, 134

About, Edmond, 74

Abraham, 38

Abrams, Dr., 239

Acton, Lord, 261

Addison, Thomas, 20

Adler, Dr. Cyrus, 301

Adler, Chief Rabbi, 181

Adler, Felix, 298, 299

Aird, Sir John, 103

Alatri, Samuel, 263

Albert, Prince, 177

Aldus (Aldine Press), 60

Alexander II, Czar, 165, 178

Alexander the Great, 40, 83

Alfred, the Englishman, 213

Alfonso XI, 214

Andrew, A Jew, 213

Antokolski, Mark, 178, 179

Apion, 22, 26, 305

Apollonius, 211

Aristotle, 210

Arnold, Benedict, 31

Arnold, Matthew, 131, 160, 286, 287,

288

Aseneth, 143

Askenazi, Lyovich Isaac, 180
Asser, Carel, 278
Asser, Moses S., 277
Asser, Tobias M. A., 278
Assouan Dam, 103, 104
Auerbach, 164
August II, of Poland, 97

B

Bacon, Francis, 163, 204, 215, 293
Bacon, Roger, 213, 215
Bagehot, Walter, 136, 286
Baker, Sir Benjamin, 103
Balzac, 161
Bank, Emanuel, 277
Barany, Robert, 237
Barings, The, 101
Baruch, 139, 141, 143
Bazin, 199

Beach, Moses Y., 33
Beaconsfield (see Disraeli)
Beer (astronomer), 219
Behain, Martin, 214
Beilis Case, 305

Belloc, Hilaire, 10, 18, 19, 25, 26, 52,
62, 89, 131, 146, 150, 232, 272, 317
Bendemann, Edouard, 175, 176
Bendemann, Rudolph, 176
Benedikt, Moris, 234

325

Benedikt, Sir William
Benjamin, Judah P., 264, 280, 281
Benjamin of Tudela, 149
Bergson, Henri, 202, 293, 301, 302,

303

Berkowitz, Rabbi Henry, 301
Bernstamm, Leopold, 179
Bernstein, Henri, 167
Bernstein, Julius, 233
Berry, Duchess de, 259
Bischoffsheims, Raphael J., 114
Bishop, Sir Henry, 198
Bismarck, 261, 263
Bizet^ 199
Bleichroders, 102
Blessington, Lady, 159
Blioch, Ivan S., 301
Boccaccio, 154
Bonaparte, Louis, 278
Borne, Karl Ludwig, 164
Braham, John, 199
Brahe, Tycho, 215
Brandes. Georges, 166, 167
Bruch, Lajas, 177
Brummel, Beau, 157
Bryce, James, 156, 258, 265, 266, 267,

268, 269, 270, 271
Burbank, Luther, 27
Burke, Edmund, 259, 265
Burroughs, John, 302-303
Byron, Lord, 161, 162

C

Calderon, 95

Cance, Professor, 251

Carel, Alexis, 221

Carlisle, Thomas, 156

Casira, 149

Cassel, Sir Ernest, 103, 104, 120

Castelar, President, 85

Castro, 149

Cavour, 260

Cayley, 217

Cellini, 182

Chamberlain, H. S., 10, 54, 55, 56, 59,
61, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 89, 131, 138,
171, 202, 203, 205, 232, 237, 272, 317

Chanute, Octave, 220

Charles, R. H,, 148

Cheyne, T. K,, 148

Cicero, 22

Cimabue, 181

Cleveland, Grover, 24, 33, 222

Cohen, Gerson, 61

Cohen, Michael, 149

Cohnheim, Julius, 236

Colonne, Edouard, 200

Columbus, Christopher, 214

326

THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

Commons, Professor John R., 49,

50, 51, 109, 317
Coolidge, President Calvin, 24, 47,

70, 72

Copernicus, 215
Coppee, Francois, 179
Cremieux, Adolph, 117, 244, 274, 276,

277

Crescas, Hasdai, 288
Crookes, Sir William, 246

D

Dagnan-Bouveret, 181
D'Aguilar, Baron, 99
Damascus Affair, The, 274, 275
Damrosch, Dr. Leopold, 201
Daniel, 208, 225
D'Annunzio, 173
Dante, 133, 154
D>Arc, Jeanne, 60

David, King, 40, 78, 79, 137, 189,
David, sculptor, 164
Davies, W. W., 156
Deborah, 310
Delacroix, 183
DeLeon, David, 26
Del Moro, Raphael, 182
Descartes, 293, 294
Diaz, 183

Disraeli, Benjamin, 156. 157, 158,
160, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 281.
Dix, Henry A., 127, 128
Dreyfus, Alfred, 14, 37
Dreyfus-Brisac, Lucian, 236
Dumas, Alexander, 164

E

Ehrlich, Paul, 237

Einstein, Albert, 202, 221, 222

Elijah, 139

Eliot, Charles W., 19, 131, 135, 282,

308, 309

Elkus, Abram I., 279
Elman, Mischa, 199
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 295
Emm Pasha, 42
Engel, Josef, 177
Epstein, Joseph, 120
Eratosthenes, 211
Esterhazy, 37
Euclid, 210, 222
Ezekiel, Moses, 185, 186
Ezra, 40, 81, 139, 143, 288

Faraday, Michael, 293
Farrar, Archdeacon, 202
Faudel-Phillips, Sir George, 273
Faunce, Dr. Wm. H. P., 219
Fischer, Adolph, 263

Flaubert, 179

Flexner, Dr. Simon, 239

Ford, Henry, 10, 14, 24, 26, 36, 89,

146, 272, 286, 300, 316, 317
Franks, Colonel, 32
Frankel, Albert, 234
Franklin, Benjamin, 31
Frauenthal, "Little", 37
Friedlander (von Malheim), 177

Gabirol, Ibn, 150, 288, 290

Galen, 226, 227, 228

Galileo, 215, 216, 292

Gama, Vasco de, 214

Gambetta, 2

Gans, David, 215

Garibaldi, 43

Garstin, Sir William, 103

George, David Lloyd, 17, 20, 52,

224, 240, 257, 264
Gerard of Cremona, 213
Gerome, 181

Gerson, Levi ben, 214, 230
Giolitti, 264
Giotto, 181

Gladstone, 265, 266, 270
Gluckel, 310
Gluge, Dr., 236
Goethe, 161, 187, 293
Goldmark, Karl, 199
Goldschmidt, Otto, 199
Goldsmid, bankers, 117
Gordon, Gov. of Egypt, 42
Gordon, Leon, 164, 165
Gosson, Stephen, 191
Gounod, 193
Gratz, Rebecca, 184
Grau, Maurice, 200
Greer, Bishop David H., 89
Gregory XVI, Pope, 263
Grotius, Hugo, 20, 173, 258, 306
Guggenheim, Simon, 127
Guggenheims, The, 107
Gtinsberg, Baron Horace, 120
Gutenberg, 60

H

Haffkine, of Calcutta, 236
Halevi, 290
Haleyy, 198
Hamilton, 217
Handel, 133, 195, 196
Haroun-al-Raschid, 55, 57, 152, 212,

229

Harriman, E. H., 104
Hart, A. S., 181
Hartman, 164
Hauck, Minnie, 200
Hay, John, 33, 185, 280

INDEX

327

Healy, George P. A., 184

Hegel, 293, 294, 296

Heine, Heinrich, 154, 160, 161, 162,

163

Herford, R. T., 148, 300
Hermann, the German, 213
Herodotus, 81, 140, 209
Herring, A. M., 220
Herschell, William, 208, 216, 217
Hertz, Alfred, 200
Hilkiah, High Priest, 139
Hill, David J., 306
Hille, 120
Hillel, 283, 313
Hiller, Ferdinand, 198
Hippocrates, 224, 226, 227, 228
Hirsch, Baroness Clara de, 113, 114,

115, 310
Hirsch, Baron Maurice de, 102, 111,

112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 245, 246,

247, 248 t 249

Hirsch, Rabbi E. G., 301
Hoover, Herbert, 124, 125, 126
Hume, 293

Hyneman, H. N., 184
Hyparchus, 211

Ibn, Ezra, 290

Immanuel, of Rome, 152, 153

Isaiah, 208, 288

Israel, Manasseh ben, 182

Israeli, Issac, 229, 230

Israels, Josef, 183, 184

Jacob, 76, 143

Jacobi, Dr. Abraham, 238, 239

Jacobi, Moritz, 218

Jacobs, Joseph, 71, 91

Jaffe, M. E., 256

Jansen, 61

Jarvis, John Wesley, 184

Jastrow, Rabbi Marcus M., 300

Jeremiah, 44, 139, 143, 189

Jerrold, Douglas, 103

Jessel, Sir George, 270, 271

"oachim, 200

'ohnson, Dr. Samuel, 63, 210

"oly, Maurice, 13

oseffy, 200
Joseph, 143

Joseph, Henry, 184
osephus, Flavins, 21, 22, 38, 82, 146,

Toshua, 40

\>siah, King, 173, 288
'udaeus, Abraham, 290
'udas Maccabatut, 41
164

Kahn, Otto, 89

Kant, Immanuel, 154

Karl, Duke of Wurtemburg, 97, 98

Kelvin, Lord, 216

Kent, Charles Foster, 146

Kepler, Jean, 215

Kerr, Dr. Norman, 316

Kingsley, Charles, 52

Koller, Dr. Carl, 239

Koni, 277

Kotinsky, Jacob, 256

Krauskopf, Rabbi Joseph, 128, 129,

130 254 300

Kuhn, Loeb & Co., 101, 104, 105
Kuranda, 263

Larousse, 152

Lasker, Edward, 261, 262

Lassalle, Ferdinand, 296, 297

Latis, Bonet de, 231

Lawrence, Amos, 121

Lawrence, Bishop William, 284, 309,

311

Layard, 210
Lehmann, Behrend, 99
Leibniz, 294
Leidesdorf, Max, 236
Leipsiger, Dr. Henry, 236
Leo X, Pope, 231
Lessing, 155, 174, 293, 294
Levison, J. G., 255
Levitan, Isaac, 180
Levy, Albert, 181
Levy, Alphonse, 181
Levy, Asser, 35, 36
Levy, Samuel, 93

Lewis, Sir George Cromwell, 281
Lewisohn, Adolph, 126
Liebreich, Oskar, 233
Liebreich, Richard, 233
Lilienthal, Otto, 219
Lincoln, President, 33
Lind, Jenny, 199
Ljndau, 164

Ljpman, Charles Bernard, 255
Lipman, Jacob G., 255
Lippmann, Gabriel, 219, 236
Liszt, Franz, 194, 199
Lodge, Sir Oliver, 225
Loeb, Professor Jacques, 239
Loewy, Benno, 127
Lombroso, Dr. Cejsare, 234, 235, 236
Lopez, Aaron, 87
Lorenzo dei Medici, 188
Loti, Pierre, 103
Louis II, Bavaria, 236
Louis XIV, 98
Louis Napoleon, 276

328

THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

Lucca, 200

Lumbroso, Jacob, 237

Lushing ton

Luzzati, Luigi, 263

Luzzati, The, 154

Lyof, Count, 150

Lytton, Edward Bulwer, 160

M

Macmahon, 217

Madison, James, 32

Maedler, 219

Magellen, 214 ^,

Maimonides, Moses, 59, 148, 151, 154,

227, 229, 230, 244, 258, 289, 290,

293, 306

Malachi, 16, 283
Manetho, 20
Manning, Cardinal, 185
Mapu, 156

Marchesi, Mathilde, 194
Maretzek, Max, 200
Marks, Bernard, 256
Maryborough, Duke of, 99
Marriott, J. A. R., 259, 260, 265, 266,

267 268

Marshall, Louis, 279
M'Arthus, 210
Marx, Karl, 297, 298
Mary, 311
Massarani, 164
Mayer, Mrs., 127
McKinky, President, 34, 185
Medici, Catherine dei, 96
Medici, Lorenzo dei, 188
Medici, Marie dei, 232
Medina, Solomon, 98
Mehxnet Ali, 117
Mealziner, 185
Meir, Rabbi, 283
Meir, of Rothenberg, 291
Meisel, Mordecai, 119
Mels, Alfred, 164
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix, 194,

198
Mendelssohn, Moses, 154, 155, 175,

196, 295, 296, 312
Mendes, Catulle, 166
Mendes, Diogo, 94, 95
Mendes, Francisco, 94, 95
Mendes, Hector, 95
Mendes-Nasi (see Nasi)
Mengs, Israel, 174
Mengs, Raphael, 177
Metchnikoff, Elia, 116
Meyer, Ernest, 175
Meyer, Siegmund, 237
Meyerbeer, 194
Michael, the Scot, 213
Michelson, Albert, 202, 220, 221
Mill, 166

Millet, 183

Milton, 133

Mitzmain, Maurice, 219

Moltke, 261

Monies, 'David, 175

Montague, 101

Montaigne, 119, 174

Montalto, Elias, 232

Montefiore, Sir C. G., 318, 319

Montefiore, Lady Judith, 310

Montefiore, Sir Moses, 117, 121, 185,

244, 276

Montesquieu, 13, 91
Monypenny, William Flavelle, 159
Morais, Dn Sabato, 300
Morgenthau, Henry, 274, 279
Morley-Michelson, 220, 221
Moro, Raphael, 182
Morris, Ira Nelson, 279
Moscheles, Felix, 181
Moscheles, Ignatz, 193, 197, 198
Moses, 39, 13>, 139, 143, 206, 258
Moses, Mrs. Solomon, 184
Mosler, Henry, 184, 185
Moulton, 133
Munk, Solomon, 276
Murad, 276

N

Najara, Israel, 190

Nasi, Joseph, 94, 95, 96, 116, 244

Nebuchadnezzar, 56, 209, 225

Nehemiah, 140

Nicolay, John G., 280, 281

Nordau, Max, 166, 236

Northcliffe, Lord, 11

O'Connell, Daniel, 118
Offenbach, Jacques, 200
Omar, 29

Oppenheim, Moritz Daniel, 176
Oppenheimer, Joseph Suss, 97, 98
Osiris, banker, 116
Ottolenghi, General Gius'eppe, 44
Ovid, 287

Palestine, 80, 243, 244, 245, 273, 274

Palestrina, 188

Palmerston, Lord, 117

Pardee, George Cooper, 121

Pasha, of Damascus, 96

Pasha, Emin, 42

Patti, Adelina, 200

Peale, Charles Wilson, 184

Peel, 159

Peixotto, George de M., 184

Percy's Reliques, 68

Perieres, The, 102

INDEX

329

Peter, Iv, 93

Petre, Dr., 10

Phillips, Sir Benjamin, 273

Phillips, Sir George

Phillipson, Rabbi, 300

Philo, 143, 144, 145, 148

Piccolomini, 200

Pick, Arnold, 237

Pierce, President, 280

Pinchot, Gifford, 255

Pintos, The, 99, 119

Pisa, Leonardo di, 213

Plato of Tivoli, 213

Pliny, 227

Pope, Alexander, 206

Porges, Joseph, 120

Porteus, Bishop, 147

Posidonius, 22

Possart, Felix, 176

Prescott, William H., 214, 223, 315

Proctor, R. A., 212

Protocols, The, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

Ptolemy, 1, 40

Pythagorous, 209, 210, 212

R

Rabelais, 154, 161

Racine, 133

Rashi, 290

Reading, Lord, 273

Rebekah, 75, 76, 203

Remak, Robert, 232

Rembrandt, 182, 183

Renan, Ernest, 69

Ricardo, David, 217

Richman, Julia, 310

Robert the Englishman, 214

Rockefeller, John D., 89

Roon, 261

Roosevelt, Theodore, 9, 12, 34, 221

Root, Elihu, 221

Rosenau, Dr. Milton J., 239

Ross, A. B, 241

Rossi, Solomon de, 190, 191

Rothschild, Amschel M., 99

Rothschild, Edmond de, 245

Rothschild, Baron James, 100

Rothschild, Nathan Meyer, 95, 99, 100

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 119, 174

Russell, B., 160, 294

Rubinstein, Anton, 194

S

Saadiah, 56, 58, 148
Sabsovich, Professor H. L., 256
Sachs, Dr. Bernard, 239
Saint-Saens, 200
Salim, Sultan, 96
Salmonson, 236, 316
Salomon, Sir David, 177
Salomon, Geskel, 175

Salomon, Haym, 32
Salomon, Sir Julian E., 272
Salomons, Sir David, 272, 273
Samuel, Sir Herbert, 273
Samuel, Sir Marcus, 273
Sand, Georges, 161
Sardou, Victorien, 179
Sassoon, Sir Abdallah, 104
Saxe, Marshall, 42
Scaliger, Joseph, 147
Schechter, Dr. Solomon, 142, 189

300

Schelling, 293
Scherer, Edmond, 157, 158
Schiff, Jacob H., 89, 105, 127
Schiff, Moriz, 234
Schiller, 179, 197
Schleirmacher, 294
Schmoller, 281
Schnitzer, see Emin Pasha
Schnitzler, Arthur, 167
Schulman, Rabbi Samuel, 301
Scott, Sir Walter, 159
See, Marc, 236
Seidl, Anton, 199
Seligmans, The, 101, 106, 107, 124,

185

Sherbrooke, Lord, 281
Silverman, Rabbi Joseph, 301
Socrates, 140
Sombart, Werner, 91
Soncino, Gerson, 60
Sonnino, Baron Sydney, 264
Sophocles, 140
Spencer, Herbert, 225, 315
Spinoza, Baruch, 154, 291, 293, 294,

295

Stafford, Justice, 289
Stahl, Friedrich J., 261
Stanley, 42
Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 133,

134, 161

Sterner, Albert, 185
Sterns, The, 101
Stilling, Benedikt, 234
Straus, Nathan, 125, 126
Straus, Oscar S., 279
Stuart, Gilbert, 184
Stuyyesant, Peter, 35, 36
Sulaiman, Sultan, 96
Sully, Thomas, 184
Stunner, Charles, 280
Sutro, Adolph J. H., 121, 122, 123
Sylvester, James Joseph, 217
Szeaes, Philip, 177

T

Tacitus, 173
Taine, 166, 265
Talbut, F. A., 219
Taubenhaus, Jacob G,, 255

330

THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION

Taussig, Carl, 194

Taylor, Bayard, 242, 311, 312, 319,

320

Taylor, President, 280
Tennyson, 76
Theus, Jeremiah, 184
Thomas, Theodore, 201
Thompson, Professor, 221
Thorwaldsen, 175
Traill, R., 147
Traube, Ludwig, 233
Treves, the Fratelli, 57
Tuoro, Judah, 121

Valentin, Gabriel G., 236
Vatican, The, 149
Veneziani, Emanuel, 247
Victor Emmanuel, 260, 263
Victoria, Queen, 117, 266, 268
Voltaire, 119, 154, 174
Von -'Ljirdecberg, Prince, 42

W

Wagner, Richard, 54, 194
Walpole, Horace, 196
Warburg, Felix, 127
Washington, George, 44

Weigert, Carl, 233

Weill, 164

Wellhauseu, 203

Wells, H G., 19, 61, 72, 78, 92, 136,

J.O/, Li\.

Weyl, Max, 184

Whiston, William, 147

White, Andrew D., 261, 262, 263

Wieniawski, 200

Willcocks, General, 10

William, the Fleming, 213

Willstater, Richard, 237

Wilson, Woodrow, 16, 221, 304

Winterstein, Freiherr von

Wise, Rabbi Isaac M., 299

Wise, Rabbi Stephen S., 150, 289,

301

Worms, Jacob, 98
Worms, Jules, 181

Xenocrates, 226

Zacuto, 214

Zangwill, Israel, 167, 168, 169
Zimbalist, Efrem, 199
Zoroaster, 141

136295